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I 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


BY 

ROBERT  H.  LOWIE,  Ph.  D. 

ASSOCIATE  PROFESSOR  OF  ANTHROPOLOGY,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA; 

editor  of  the  American  Anthropologist 


BONI  AND  LIVERIGHT 

PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


1924 


Copyright,  1924,  by 
Boni  and  Liveright,  Inc. 


All  Rights  Reserved 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


PREFACE 


This  work  does  not  purport  to  be  a  handbook  of  either  the 
theories  broached  on  the  subject  of  primitive  religion  or  of  the 
ethnographic  data  described  in  hundreds  of  accessible  mono¬ 
graphs.  My  purpose  is  to  provide  an  introduction  to  further 
study  in  which  other  than  the  traditional  topics  shall  assume  a 
place  of  honor.  On  the  other  hand  I  have  taken  pains  to  re¬ 
duce  to  a  minimum  the  discussion  of  theories  that  have  been 
more  than  amply  treated  by  previous  writers. 

The  mode  of  approach  will  be  found  to  differ  fundamentally 
from  that  of  my  book  on  Primitive  Society.  The  reason  lies  in 
the  quite  different  status  of  the  two  subjects  at  the  present 
time.  In  the  field  of  primitive  sociology  it  seemed  desirable  to 
marshal  the  evidence  against  the  indefensible  neglect  of  histori¬ 
cal  considerations  that  persists  in  some  quarters.  In  the  study 
of  comparative  religion  it  is  the  psychological  point  of  view  that 
requires  emphasis ;  and  however  important  history  may  be  for 
an  elucidation  of  psychology,  its  part  is  ancillary.  By  con¬ 
sistently  stressing  the  psychological  aspects  of  primitive  religion 
I  hope  to  have  contributed  something  to  a  closer  alliance  of 
two  sister  sciences  that  too  frequently  have  pursued  their 
paths  in  mutual  neglect. 

Several  friends  have  been  good  enough  to  read  or  listen  to 
portions  of  the  book — above  all,  Dr.  Leslie  Spier  and  Mrs. 
Erna  Gunther  Spier  of  the  University  of  Washington;  Pro¬ 
fessors  A.  L.  Kroeber  and  Erasmo  Buceta  of  the  University 
of  California;  Mr.  E.  W.  Gifford  of  the  same  institution; 
and  my  friends  Mr.  Donald  B.  Clark  and  Dr.  Jaime  de  An¬ 
gulo  y  Mayo.  I  take  this  opportunity  to  thank  them  for  their  en¬ 
couragement  and  their  comments.  To  Mr.  Gifford  I  am  also  in- 


VI 


PREFACE 


debted  for  the  orthography  of  proper  names  in  Mariner’s  ac¬ 
count,  which  is  brought  into  accord  with  approved  Tongan 
usage  and  thus  comes  closer  to  phonetic  spelling. 

My  manuscript  was  completed  when  I  received  a  copy  of 
Father  Wilhelm  Koppers’s  book  on  the  Fuegians.  It  was  no 
longer  possible  to  utilize  it  as  I  should  otherwise  have  done, 
but  I  took  pains  to  incorporate  some  of  the  interesting  data 
presented  there  and  to  include  the  work  in  my  bibliography. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  paper  on  some  basic  religious  concepts  by 
Dr.  John  R.  S wanton,  which  is  to  appear  in  a  forthcoming  issue 
of  the  American  Anthropologist,  reached  me  too  late  to  be  used 
in  any  way,  so  that  I  must  content  myself  with  this  meager 
reference. 

Robert  H,  Lowie. 

Berkeley,  Cal., 

May,  1924. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface  .  v 

Introduction . ix 

PART  I:  SYNTHETIC  SKETCHES 

CHAPTER 

I  Crow  Religion . 3 

II  Ekoi  Religion . 33 

III  Bukaua  Religion . 54 

IV  Polynesian  Religion . .7 5 

PART  II :  CRITIQUE  OF  THEORIES 

V  Animism . 99 

VI  Magic . 136 

VII  Collectivism . 153 

PART  III :  HISTORICAL  AND  PSYCHO¬ 
LOGICAL  ASPECTS 

VIII  Historical  Schemes  and  Regional  Charac¬ 
terization  . 167 

IX  History  and  Psychology . 185 

X  Woman  and  Religion . 205 

XI  Individual  Variability . 221 

XII  Religion  and  Art . 259 

XIII  Association . 277 

XIV  Conclusion . 321 

Bibliography . 331 

Index . 343 

•  • 
vii 


♦ 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


INTRODUCTION 

A  work  on  “Primitive  Religion”  may  well  begin  with  a 
definition  of  the  terms  in  its  title,  for  neither  unfortunately 
is  unambiguous.  The  word  “primitive”  by  its  etymology 
suggests  “primeval,”  but  when  the  anthropologist  speaks  de¬ 
scriptively  of  “primitive  peoples”  he  means  no  more — at 
least,  he  has  no  right  to  mean  more — than  peoples  of  a  rela¬ 
tively  simple  culture;  or,  to  be  more  specific,  the  illiterate 
peoples  of  the  world.  To  be  sure,  it  is  impossible  to  sup¬ 
press  the  inference  that  what  is  shared  by  the  illiterate 
peoples  of  rudest  culture  in  contrast  to  those  possessing  a 
more  complex  civilization  dates  back  to  a  relatively  great 
antiquity;  but  this  is  an  inference,  not  an  immediate  datum 
of  experience.  Moreover,  it  is  certain  that,  no  matter  how 
simple  a  particular  culture  may  be,  it  has  had  a  long  history. 
Human  civilization  may  be  roughly  said  to  be  100,000  years 
old.  It  is  inconceivable  that  any  distinct  subdivision  of  man¬ 
kind,  even  if  separated  from  others  for  only  one-tenth  of 
that  immense  span  of  time,  should  have  remained  in  an  abso¬ 
lutely  static  condition.  There  are  two  cogent  reasons  to  the 
contrary.  First,  isolation  has  never  been  more  than  relative 
when  very  great  periods  are  considered.  In  other  words,  in¬ 
fluences  from  without  have  everywhere  produced  some 
changes  in  custom,  belief,  and  the  material  arts  of  life.  Sec¬ 
ondly,  such  alterations  occur,  though  more  slowly,  even  in 
the  absence  of  extraneous  stimulation  because  of  the  social 


ix 


X 


INTRODUCTION 


results  of  individual  variation,  that  is,  of  innovations  suc¬ 
cessfully  impressed  on  each  generation  by  some  able  individ¬ 
uals  of  sufficiently  powerful  personality.  Both  determinants 
of  change  can  be  detected  in  so  isolated  and  so  simple  a  peo¬ 
ple  as  the  Andaman  Islanders  of  the  Bay  of  Bengal.  Their 
remoteness  did  not  prevent  them  from  borrowing  the  device 
of  the  outrigger  canoe,  presumably  from  some  Malaysian 
tribe;  and  the  local  variations  found  within  their  islands, 
both  in  language  and  social  heritage,  prove  the  occurrence  of 
novel  ideas  even  in  a  population  ignorant  of  metals  and  every 
form  of  husbandry,  nay,  lacking  even  the  dog  and  the  art  of 
fire-making.  In  other  words,  the  Andamanese  culture  of 
fifty  years  ago  is  not  the  culture  of  their  ancestors  five  hun¬ 
dred  years  ago,  or  in  still  earlier  periods ;  and,  so  far  as  di¬ 
rect  observation  goes,  we  cannot  select  any  one  feature  of 
their  social  life  as  of  hoary  antiquity.  “Primitive,”  then, 
for  our  purposes  shall  be  devoid  of  chronological  import. 

It  is  far  more  difficult  to  explain  what  shall  be  designated 
by  the  word  “religion.”  Of  course,  a  formal  definition  of 
religion  would  be  as  futile  at  the  outset  as  a  corresponding 
definition  of  consciousness  in  a  textbook  of  psychology,  or 
of  electricity  in  a  treatise  on  physics.  The  rich  content  of 
these  comprehensive  concepts  can  be  appreciated  only  after  a 
survey  of  the  relevant  data  is  completed.  Yet  some  circum¬ 
scription  of  what  is  to  be  included  is  not  only  possible  but 
necessary,  and  it  will  be  convenient  to  begin  by  illustrating 
the  wrong  approach  to  a  definition  by  two  extreme  instances 
gleaned  from  Fielding’s  novels.  Says  Parson  Thwackum 
in  T om  Jones , 

When  I  mention  religion,  I  mean  the  Christian  religion ;  and 
not  only  the  Christian  religion  but  the  Protestant  religion;  and 
not  only  the  Protestant  religion,  but  the  Church  of  England. 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

And  Parson  Adams,  in  Joseph  Andrews,  is  equally  ex¬ 
plicit  : 

The  first  care  I  always  take  is  of  a  boy’s  morals ;  I  had  rather 
he  should  be  a  blockhead  than  an  atheist  or  a  Presbyterian. 

Why  do  utterances  such  as  these  strike  us  as  ineffably 
parochial?  From  one  angle  it  might  seem  that  a  man  has 
the  right  to  define  his  terms  as  he  will,  provided  only  he  ad¬ 
here  to  the  usage  once  established;  and  if  to  embrace  the 
Anglican  Church  means  salvation,  while  Calvinism  spells 
perdition,  then  from  that  particular  point  of  view  there  is 
nothing  to  choose  between  being  a  Presbyterian  and  being 
an  atheist.  This  position  is  indeed  inexpugnable  so  long  as 
it  is  avowedly  no  more  than  a  personal  evaluation;  it  is 
shattered  as  soon  as  it  pretends  to  give  an  objective  classifi¬ 
cation  of  the  pertinent  data.  In  this  second  role  it  recalls 
that  comical  classification  of  some  aboriginal  language  by 
which  male  adult  members  of  the  tribe  are  of  one  gender, 
while  all  other  persons  are  lumped  in  a  vast  complementary 
category  together  with  animals,  plants,  and  objects.  We  re¬ 
quire  no  proof  that  a  boy  or  a  woman  or  a  foreigner  is  nearer 
to  a  tribesman  than  to  a  tree  or  a  rock;  and  so  we  see  at 
once  that  it  is  arbitrary  to  dichotomize  the  religious  universe 
after  the  manner  of  Fielding’s  parsons,  that  such  division 
wrests  the  phenomena  out  of  their  true  context  and  does 
violence  to  their  true  inwardness. 

But  when  once  committed  to  this  moderately  tolerant  at¬ 
titude,  we  are  still  without  guidance  as  to>  where  the  line 
shall  be  drawn.  Working  our  way  backwards  from  a  par¬ 
ticular  branch  of  Christianity,  we  are  still  able  to  recognize 
some  kinship  between  our  faith  and  that  of  other  monothe¬ 
istic  creeds.  When  we  come  to  Buddhism,  with  its  theoreti¬ 
cal  atheism,  many  of  us  will  be  inclined  to  deny  that  any 


Xll 


INTRODUCTION 


doctrine  dispensing  with  the  notion  of  a  personal  deity  can 
fairly  be  brought  under  the  same  heading  with  familiar  re¬ 
ligions.  Yet  William  James,  our  greatest  psychologist,  has 
espoused  the  view  that  Buddhism,  like  Emersonian  transcen¬ 
dentalism,  makes  to  the  individual  votary  an  appeal  and 
evokes  a  response  “in  fact  indistinguishable  from,  and  in 
many  respects  identical  with,  the  best  Christian  appeal  and 
response.” 1  James  may  conceivably  err  in  this  particular 
judgment,  but  anthropologically  speaking  there  can  be  no 
doubt  of  the  correctness  of  his  test:  if  Buddhism  satisfies 
that  part  of  the  Buddhist’s  nature  which  corresponds  to  the 
devout  Christian’s  longing  for  acceptance  by  the  deity,  then 
it  is  a  veritable  religion,  just  as  polygyny  is  anthropologi¬ 
cally  no  less  a  form  of  marriage  than  monogamy,  and  an 
oral  tradition  must  be  reckoned,  despite  etymology,  a  speci¬ 
men  of  literature. 

such  satisfaction  essentially  lies.  Confronted  with  beliefs 
and  practices  divorced  from  an  organized  priesthood,  lack¬ 
ing  congregational  worship  and  a  standardized  cosmogony, 
we  must  ask  not  whether  this  or  that  objective  feature  shall 
be  counted  as  essential  but  whether  the  subjective  condition 
of  the  believers  and  worshipers  corresponds  to  that  of  an 
unequivocally  religious  frame  of  mind. 

That  the  mere  presence  of  some  objective  feature  is  wholly 
irrelevant  may  be  illustrated  by  citing  the  opening  para¬ 
graphs  of  Leibniz’s  Metaphysics: 

The  conception  of  God  which  is  the  most  common  and  the 
most  fujl  of  meaning  is  expressed  well  enough  in  the  words : 
God  is  an  absolutely  perfect  being.  The  implications,  however, 
of  these  words  fail  to  receive  sufficient  consideration.  For  in¬ 
stance,  there  are  many  different  kinds  of  perfection,  all  of 
which  God  possesses,  and  each  one  of  them  pertains  to  him  in 
the  highest  degree. 


INTRODUCTION 


xm 


We  must  also  know  what  perfection  is.  One  thing  which 
can  surely  be  affirmed  about  it  is  that  those  forms  or  natures 
which  are  not  susceptible  of  it  to  the  highest  degree,  say  the 
nature  of  numbers  or  of  figures,  do  not  permit  of  perfection. 
This  is  because  the  number  which  is  the  greatest  of  all  (that 
is,  the  sum  of  all  the  numbers),  and  likewise  the  greatest  of  all 
figures,  imply  contradictions.  The  greatest  knowledge,  how¬ 
ever,  and  omnipotence  contain  no  impossibility.  Consequently 
power  and  knowledge  do  admit  of  perfection,  and  in  so  far  as 
they  pertain  to  God  they  have  no  limits. 

Whence  it  follows  that  God,  who  possesses  supreme  and  in¬ 
finite  wisdom,  acts  in  the  most  perfect  manner  not  only  meta¬ 
physically,  but  also  from  the  moral  standpoint.  And  with  re¬ 
spect  to  ourselves  it  can  be  said  that  the  more  we  are  enlightened 
and  informed  in  regard  to  the  works  of  God  the  more  will  we 
be  disposed  to  find  them  excellent  and  conforming  entirely  to 
that  which  we  might  desire. 

Is  this  passage  an  expression  of  religious  sentiment?  Of 
course  it  is  in  thorough  harmony  with  traditional  religion, 
yet  it  belongs  to  a  different  compartment.  It  shares  with 
monotheistic  religion  its  subject-matter  as  an  artist  and  a 
scientist  may  share  a  bit  of  landscape,  the  one  for  depiction, 
the  other  for  a  study  of  the  flora.  In  Leibniz  the  religious 
flavor  is  singularly  absent,  because  his  abstract  propositions 
leave  the  religious  consciousness  cold.  Whatever  disagree¬ 
ment  may  exist  on  the  subject,  the  dominance  of  the  emo¬ 
tional  side  of  consciousness  in  religion  is  universally  ac¬ 
cepted,  and  where  that  phase  of  mental  life  is  in  relative 
abeyance  religion  must  be  considered  wanting. 

It  is  the  insufficient  consideration  given  to  the  emotional 
factor  of  religion  that  makes  it  necessary  to  qualify  and  re¬ 
vise  the  views  enunciated  by  the  greatest  of  comparative 
students  in  this  field.  When,  in  1871,  Edward  B.  Tylor  pub¬ 
lished  the  first  edition  of  his  Primitive  Culture ,  he:  was  above 


XIV 


INTRODUCTION 


all  interested  in  the  problem  of  evolution.  Darwin’s  Origin 
of  Species  had  begun  to  stimulate  historical  thinking  in 
other  than  biological  lines,  and  the  investigator  of  culture 
naturally  sought  to  parallel  the  paleontologist’s  and  embryolo¬ 
gist’s  record  by  corresponding  sequences  in  industrial  arts, 
social  organization  and  belief.  As  to  the  last-mentioned 
branch  of  culture,  it  was  clear  that  if  evolution  were  ac¬ 
cepted  at  all  there  must  have  been  some  stage  in  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  man,  whether  corresponding  to  a  human  or  pre¬ 
human  level,  at  which  religion  had  not  yet  evolved.  Then 
there  inevitably  arose  the  query,  whether  that  stage  was 
represented  by  any  people  still  living.  It  was  this  prob¬ 
lem,  among  others,  that  Tylor  set  out  to  solve.  But  in 
order  to  solve  it  he  was  obliged  to  frame  a  “minimum  def¬ 
inition”  of  religion.  Rejecting  as  too  exclusive,  as  express¬ 
ing  rather  special  developments  than  the  basic  nature  of  re¬ 
ligion,  various  current  definitions,  he  found  its  essence  to 
lie  in  animism,  that  is,  in  “the  belief  in  Spiritual  Beings”; 
and  because  such  a  belief  had  been  reported  from  all  ade¬ 
quately  described  tribes  on  the  face  of  the  globe,  Tylor  in¬ 
ferred  the  universality  of  religion.2 

What  more  recent  scholars  reject  is  not  this  conclusion  it¬ 
self,  which  stands  practically  unchallenged,  but  its  motiva¬ 
tion.  In  Tylor’s  discussion  the  belief  in  spiritual  beings, 
that  is,  religion  in  his  sense,  is  made  to  arise  in  response  to 
an  intellectual  need, — -the  desire  of  an  explanation  for  the 
physiological  phenomena  of  life,  sleep,  dream,  and  death. 
This  rationalistic  bias  appears  clearly  from  the  very  phrases 
used  in  referring  to  primitive  animism,  which  is  again  and 
again  alluded  to  as  a  philosophy,  a  doctrine,  “the  theory  of 
dreams,”  “a  perfectly  rational  and  intelligible  product  of 
early  science,”  “the  theory  of  souls.”  3  It  is  conceivable 
that  the  craving  for  a  causal  explanation  might  lead  to  the 


\ 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

notion  of  spirits  as  suggested  by  Tylor  without  the  slight¬ 
est  consequent  or  associated  emotional  reaction  essential  to 
religion;  indeed,  not  a  few  examples  might  be  cited  of 
spiritual  beings  postulated  by  primitive  tribes  for,  so  far 
as  one  can  see,  an  exclusive  satisfaction  of  their  metaphysi¬ 
cal  demands. 

In  this  way,  then,  Tylor’s  formulation  is  not  exacting 
enough,  for  it  omits  an  essential  determinant  of  the  phe¬ 
nomenon  to  be  defined.  Yet  in  another  sense,  meager  as  it 
may  appear  at  first  sight,  it  demands  more  than  is  required. 
For  we  have  already  seen  that  even  a  system  of  belief  de¬ 
void  of  animistic  conceptions,  like  Buddhism,  may  function 
as  the  psychological  equivalent  of  Christianity  or  any  other 
of  the  faiths  of  Western  civilization.  What,  then,  is  the 
bond  that  unites  beliefs  which  on  the  surface  are  so  di¬ 
vergent?  The  essentially  correct  answer  seems  to  me  to 
have  been  given  by  Dr.  R.  R.  Marett  and  Dr.  N.  Soder- 
blom,  the  Archbishop  of  Upsala,  and  I  will  try  to  set  forth 
in  a  few  words  the  most  significant  points  involved.  In 
every  society,  no  matter  how  simple  it  may  be,  there  is  a 
spontaneous  division  of  the  sphere  of  experience  into  the 
)  ordinary  and  the  extraordinary.  Some  writers,  notably 
Levy-Bruhl,  impressed  with  the  fantastic  theoretical  no¬ 
tions  obtaining  among  unlettered  peoples  in  regard  to  the* 
constitution  and  origin  of  the  universe,  have  broached  the 
view  that  such  odd  fancies  must  be  rooted  in  a  mental 
condition  radically  different  from  our  own.  Yet  closer  at¬ 
tention  to  the  usages  of  savage  life  demonstrates  beyond 
the  possibility  of  doubt  that  in  grappling  with  the  problems 
of  everyday  life  primitive  man  often  employs  precisely  the 
same  psychological  processes  of  association,  observation, 
and  inference  as  our  own  farmers,  engineers,  or  craftsmen. 
When  a  Hopi  Indian  in  Arizona  raises  corn  where  a  white 


XVI 


INTRODUCTION 


tiller  fails,  when  a  Papuan  boatwright  constructs  elaborate 
buildings  without  nails  or  metal  implements,  when  a  Poly¬ 
nesian  carves  the  most  esthetic  patterns  with  a  shark’s  tooth, 
he  is  solving  his  everyday  problems  not  only  competently 
but  with  elegance.  All  these  activities,  however,  though 
sometimes  curiously  associated  with  (to  our  mind)  irrele¬ 
vant  considerations,  belong  in  the  main  to  what  Dr.  Marett 
would  call  the  workaday  world,  i.  e.,  the  domain  of  reason, 
of  normal  experience,  of  an  empirical  correspondence  of 
cause  and  effect.  But  everywhere  there  is,  in  addition  to 
such  practical  rationalism,  a  sense  of  something  transcend¬ 
ing  the  expected  or  natural,  a  sense  of  the  Extraordinary, 

|  Mysterious,  or  Supernatural.  Certainly  that  sense  is  very 
'  frequently,  and  conceivably  might  be  always,  linked  with 
the  recognition  of  spiritual  beings;  but  to  what  extent  such 
a  correlation  obtains  is  a  matter  for  empirical  inquiry  and 
should  not  be  prejudged.  But  even  were  this  association 
of  spirit-belief  with  a  sense  of  mystery  an  invariable  phe¬ 
nomenon,  it  would  still  be  legitimate  to  argue  that  it  is  the 
latter  which  is  indispensable  to  religion,  that  the  belief  in 
spirits  derives  its  religious  value  solely  from  this  association 
instead  of  being  religious  in  its  own  right.  The  fact  that 
subjective  states  indistinguishable  from  religious  ones  are 
indifferently  found  with  and  without  animistic  notions  defi¬ 
nitely  settles  the  matter.  We  shall  therefore  recognize  as 
the  differentia  of  religion  what  Drs.  Marett  and  Golden- 
weiser  have  called  “supernaturalism.”  4 

Reverting  to  the  problem  that  engaged  Tylor’s  attention, 
we  shall  say:  Religion  is  verily  a  universal  feature  of  hu- 
'  man  culture,  not  because  all  societies  foster  a  belief  in 
spirits,  but  because  all  recognize  in  some  form  or  other/ 
I]  awe-inspiring,  extraordinary  manifestations  of  reality. ' 
The  present  treatise  is  accordingly  dedicated  to  the  discus- 


INTRODUCTION 


xvii 

sion  of  those  cultural  phenomena  of  the  simpler  societies 
which  center  about  or  are  somehow  connected  with  the 
sense  of  mystery  or  weirdness.  Owing  to  the  many  ramifi¬ 
cations  of  such  supernaturalism,  this  definition  leads  not 
to  a  rigid  exclusion  but  merely  to  a  somewhat  different  ap¬ 
praisal  of  features  commonly  treated  under  the  head  of  re¬ 
ligion. 

For  the  colorless  terms  employed  above  Dr.  Soderblom 
substitutes  the  concept  of  the  Holy  or  the  Sacred.  It  is  un¬ 
doubtedly  true  that  in  a  great  many  instances  that  which  is 
set  over  in  contrast  to  everyday  experience  is  invested  with 
a  halo  of  sanctity  that  justifies  the  use  of  the  terms  cited. 
However,  if  I  correctly  interpret  the  data,  the  Supernatural 
is  Janus-headed,  and  its  more  sinister  aspect  is  not  ade¬ 
quately  rendered  by  our  word  “holy”  with  its  traditional 
connotations.  I  therefore  prefer  to  use  noncommittal  ex¬ 
pressions  when  groping  for  a  minimum  definition  of  reli¬ 
gion,  though  I  am  the  last  to  deny  the  great  frequency  with 
which  the  Extraordinary  or  Supernatural  assumes  the  as¬ 
pect  of  the  Holy. 

In  studying  alien  religions  the  same  precaution  must  be 
observed  as  in  the  study  of  comparative  linguistics. 
Pioneer  investigators  of  primitive  languages  were  wont  to 
pattern  their  descriptions  on  the  Latin  grammar.  Indeed, 
many  of  us  were  taught  English  grammar  on  the  same 
plan, — obliged  to  recite  the  non-existent  datives  and  ac¬ 
cusatives  of  nouns,  and  the  equally  chimerical  imperfect  sub¬ 
junctives  of  verbs.  Gradually,  however,  philologists  came 
to  realize  that  Latin  grammar,  thus  used,  was  a  Procrus¬ 
tean  bed  and  that  each  tongue  must  be  viewed  according  to 
its  own  genius.  The  application  is  obvious.  When  we 
approach  an  alien  faith,  we  have  no  right  to  impose  our 
received  categories.  Because  our  sacred  Book  contains  an 


XV111 


INTRODUCTION 


account  of  cosmogony,  it  does  not  follow  that  a  given  primi¬ 
tive  cosmogony  comes  within  the  scope  of  religion.  Though 
immortality  has  played  an  enormous  part  in  the  history  of 
Christianity,  it  need  not  occupy  the  center  of  the  stage  in 
other  forms  of  belief. 

The  only  legitimate  mode  of  approach  will  then  corre¬ 
spond  to  the  modern  linguist’s :  considering  each  religion 
from  the  point  of  view  of  its  votaries,  let  us  ascertain  what 
are  their  concepts  of  the  Supernatural,  how  they  are  inter¬ 
related  and  weighted  with  reference  to  one  another.  For 
reasons  of  space  it  is  manifestly  impracticable  to  sketch 
more  than  a  limited  number  of  distinct  aboriginal  religions, 
even  were  it  possible  to  gain  a  sympathetic  insight  into  the 
essentials  of  many  more.  Hence,  I  have  made  a  selection 
of  four  representative  samples. 

I  begin  with  the  Crow  Indians  of  eastern  Montana  be¬ 
cause  I  am  here  able  to  offer  the  results  of  personal  inquiries 
in  the  field;  and  because  this  tribe  exemplifies  one  particu¬ 
lar  conception  of  the  Extraordinary,  a  conception,  more¬ 
over,  typical  of  many  other  North  American  aborigines. 

From  this  group  of  Plains  Indian  hunters  I  pass  to  the 
horticultural  Ekoi  of  Kamerun  and  Southern  Nigeria  be¬ 
cause  these  West  Africans  represent  a  wholly  different  at¬ 
titude  toward  the  Supernatural  and  neatly  set  off  some  of 
the  features  that  distinguish  Old  World  from  New  World 
belief  and  ritual. 

The  Bukaua  and  their  neighbors,  the  Jabim  and  Tami, 
about  the  shores  of  Huon  Gulf,  New  Guinea,  while  shar¬ 
ing  some  of  the  African  notions,  exhibit  and  stress  still 
other  methods  of  reaction  toward  the  Extraordinary  and 
exhibit  one  form  of  widespread  ceremonial  with  great 
clarity. 

Finally,  the  Polynesians  display  an  incomparable  elabora- 


INTRODUCTION 


xix 


<s 


tion  of  what  exists  in  germ  not  only  among  the  Bukaua  but, 
in  a  wider  sense,  in  the  primitive  world  at  large. 

In  all  four  cases  my  choice  has  been  determined  in  part 
by  the  availability  of  ample  and  trustworthy  material. 

Lest  there  be  any  misunderstanding  on  the  subject,  I 
take  pains  to  point  out  that  the  general  statements  made  in 
these  synthetic  sketches  will  not  be  found  in  that  form  in 
the  descriptive  monographs  laid  under  contribution, — not 
even  when  these  happen  to  be  by  myself.  What  I  have 
tried  to  do  is  to  saturate  myself  with  the  material  and  to 
interpret  it  as  far  as  possible  from  the  natives’  point  of 
view;  and  in  this  attempt  I  have  sometimes  turned  the  ob¬ 
servers’  data  inside  out.  That  accordingly  a  subjective  ele¬ 
ment  attaches  to  these  pictures,  is  undeniable :  to  be  fore¬ 
warned  is  to  be  forearmed.  Nevertheless,  the  compensa¬ 
tory  advantages  seem  to  me  sufficient  to  justify  the  under¬ 
taking  from  a  pedagogical,  and  not  merely  from  a  peda¬ 
gogical,  point  of  view. 


References 


All  titles  are  fully  quoted  in  the  terminal  Bibliography,  where 
authors  are  listed  alphabetically  and  their  several  publications 
chronologically;  titles  of  the  same  author  are  distinguished  by 
letters.  The  chapter  references  cite  the  author’s  name  if  he  is 
represented  by  a  single  title;  his  name  and  the  date  if  two  or 
more  papers  or  books  are  listed;  and  if  there  are  two  in  the 
same  year,  the  letter  is  added.  The  pages  are  set  off  by  colons. 

Examples.  James:  34.  Tylor,  1877:  I,  424.  Lowie,  1915 
(a)  :  62. 

1  James :  34. 

2  Tylor,  1913:  I,  424. 

3  Tylor,  1913:  I,  440,  447;  id.,  1881 :  371. 

4Marett,  11,  101-121.  Goldenweiser,  1922:  231. 


Part  I:  Synthetic  Sketches 


. 


CHAPTER  I 


CROW  RELIGION  1 
The  Vision 

As  a  young  Crow  Indian  approached  adolescence,  he 
could  not  fail  to  observe  the  differences  among  his  tribes¬ 
men  in  point  of  social  position.  Though  hereditary  distinc¬ 
tions  of  rank  were  wholly  lacking,  some  individuals  were 
regarded  with  far  more  respect  than  others,  possibly  be¬ 
cause  of  their  wealth  and  wisdom  but  especially  because  of 
their  great  exploits  in  war.  When  a  father  wanted  his 
newborn  babe  named,  Bell-rock  would  be  summoned  to  dub 
it  after  one  of  his  own  deeds  of  valor;  and  he  might  re¬ 
ceive  a  horse  by  way  of  compensation.  At  the  time  of  the 
great  Sun  festival  brave  men — and  only  such — were  enter¬ 
tained  with  that  prized  delicacy,  buffalo  tongues.  Warriors 
about  to  raid  a  hostile  camp  would  go  to  Sore-tail  for  in¬ 
structions,  and  when  they  returned  laden  with  spoils  the 

% 

choicest  of  the  booty  went  to  Sore-tail’s  lodge  till  he  ranked 
as  the  wealthiest  Crow  within  the  memory  of  man.  Why 
had  he  become  rich  while  Small-back  remained  horseless  ex¬ 
cept  for  the  little  nag  a  generous  brave  had  in  sheer  pity 
donated  to  him?  Why  was  Bell-rock  the  greatest  of  all 
chiefs  and  Yellow-crane  rated  a  good-for-nothing  poltroon? 
The  young  man  knew,  for  from  a  boy  he  had  had  the  an¬ 
swer  dinned  into  his  ears :  to  become  great,  to-  make  sure 
of  success  in  any  of  life’s  critical  situations,  one  must  gain 
the  blessing  of  some  supernatural  power.  A  few  favored 

3 


4 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


persons  were  lucky  enough  to  be  visited  by  the  spirits  in 
their  sleep  or  in  some  other  way  that  involved  no  effort; 
but  the  majority  had  to  earn  their  vision  through  pain  and 
hardship.  The  ambitious  warrior,  the  mourner  filled  with 
the  lust  for  vengeance,  the  spurned  lover,  and  the  youth 
chafing  from  a  sense  of  his  family’s  poverty,  must  mortify 
their  flesh  and  thus  rouse  the  compassion  of  the  supernat¬ 
ural  powers. 

The  procedure  was  fairly  fixed.  A  would-be  visionary 
would  go  to  a  lonely  spot,  preferably  to  the  summit  of  a 
mountain.  Naked  except  for  a  breechclout  and  the  buffalo 
robe  to  cover  him  at  night,  he  abstained  from  food  and 
drink  for  four  days  or  more  if  necessary,  wailing  and  in¬ 
voking  the  spirits.  Usually  some  form  of  bodily  torture  or 
disfigurement  was  practised  as  an  offering  to  the  super¬ 
natural  beings.  Most  commonly,  perhaps,  men  would  hack 
off  a  finger  joint  of  the  left  hand,  so  that  during  the  period 
of  my  visits  to  the  Crow  (1907-1916)  I  saw  few  old  men 
with  left  hands  intact.  The  Sun  was  generally  the  being 
supplicated,  and  the  following  may  serve  as  an  example  of 
a  typical  prayer: 

Hallo,  Old  Man,  I  am  poor!  You  see  me,  give  me  something 
good.  Give  me  long  life ;  grant  that  I  may  own  a  horse,  that  I 
capture  a  gun,  that  I  strike  a  blow  against  the  enemy !  Let  me 
become  a  chief,  let  me  own  plenty  of  property ! 

But  although  the  Sun  was  called,  he  rarely  appeared.  The 
actual  visitants  are  occasionally  connected  with  the  Sun  as 
his  messengers  or  symbols,  but  in  general  they  are  con¬ 
ceived  as  in  no  way  related  to  him.  According  to  a  usual 
pattern,  they  present  themselves  in  human  guise  but  before 
they  leave  their  true  nature  is  revealed,  either  by  the  words 
of  their  song  or  their  re-transformation  or  by  some  special 


CROW  RELIGION 


5 

instruction.  The  visitant  adopts  the  suppliant  as  his  child 
and  proceeds  to  give  him  specific  directions.  If  martial 
glory  is  sought,  the  spirit  may  give  a  dramatic  performance 
of  combat,  himself  equipped  in  sharply  defined  fashion, 
defying  the  hostile  darts  and  laying  low  the  enemy.  The 
implication  is  that  if  the  spirit’s  newly  adopted  child  shall 
scrupulously  imitate  his  patron’s  appearance  and  follow  any 
special  admonitions  conveyed  to  him,  he  will  gain  his  ends. 

An  illustration  or  two  of  visions  actually  reported  by  my 
informants  will  make  the  matter  clearer. 

When  Medicine-crow  was  a  young  man,  he  fasted  for 
four  days,  offered  a  finger  joint  to  the  Sun,  and  prayed  for 
horses.  A  young  man  and  a  young  woman  suddenly  came 
towards  him,  each  holding  a  hoop  with  feathers  in  one 
hand  and  a  hoop  with  strawberries  in  the  other.  The 
woman  said,  “We  have  come  here  to  let  him  hear  some¬ 
thing.”  While  Medicine-crow  was  wondering  what  she  had 
in  mind,  her  companion  went  to  the  other  side  of  the  ridge 
and  soon  reappeared,  driving  a  herd  of  horses.  The 
woman  followed  suit,  also  returning  with  horses.  Both 
wore  crowns  of  a  certain  kind.  One  of  them  said,  “I  have 
shown  you  all  these  horses.  I  am  the  sacred  Tobacco.  I 
want  you  to  join  the  Tobacco  society  with  these  crowns.” 
The  young  woman  told  him  not  to  allow  guns  at  the  tobacco 
planting. 

As  a  result  of  this  experience  Medicine-crow  not  only 
came  to  own  a  great  many  horses  but  also  founded  a  new 
chapter  of  the  great  ceremonial  organization  known  as  the 
Tobacco  society,  making  all  his  followers  wear  such  crowns 
as  had  been  revealed  to  him  and  forbidding  the  use  of  fire¬ 
arms  in  connection  with  the  ritual. 

While  Medicine-crow’s  experience  is  typical  of  communi¬ 
cations  that  lead  to  ceremonial  prominence  and  wealth,  that 


j 


i 


6 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


of  Scratches-face  represents  a  popular  form  of  war  vision. 
He,  too,  fasted  and  cut  off  a  finger  joint,  which  he  offered 
to  a  mythical  character  called  Old-woman’s-grandson,  who 
is  sometimes  identified  with  the  Morning-star.  This  was 
the  prayer  uttered  on  this  occasion : 

Old-woman’s-grandson,  I  give  you  this  (joint),  give  me 
something  good  in  exchange.  ...  I  am  poor,  give  me  a  good 
horse.  I  want  to  strike  one  of  the  enemies  and  ...  I  want  to 
marry  a  good-natured  woman.  I  want  a  tent  of  my  own  to 
live  in. 

After  his  sacrifice  he  heard  footsteps  but  could  not  see  any 
one.  He  fell  asleep  and  heard  a  voice :  “What  are  you 
doing?  You  wanted  him  to  come.  Now  he  has  come.” 
Then  he  saw  six  men  riding  horses,  one  of  them  seated  on 
a  bobtail,  and  this  one  said,  “You  have  been  poor,  so  I’ll 
give  you  what  you  want  ...  I  am  going  to  run.”  The 
trees  around  there  suddenly  turned  into  enemies  and  began 
to  shoot  at  the  horsemen,  who'  rode  away  but  returned  un¬ 
scathed.  The  rider  of  the  bobtail  said  to  Scratches-face, 
“If  you  want  to  fight  all  the  people  on  the  earth,  do  as  I 
do,  and  you  will  be  able  to  fight  for  three  or  four  days  and 
yet  not  be  shot.”  The  horsemen  began  to  ride  east  .  .  . 
The  enemies  attacked  them  once  more,  but  the  rider  of  the 
bobtail  knocked  them  down  with  a  spear.  A  storm  came 
up  (explained  as  the  Thunder),  and  hailstones  big  as  a  fist 
knocked  down  the  enemies. 

In  consequence  of  his  blessing  Scratches-face  struck  and 
killed  an  enemy  without  ever  getting  wounded.  He  also 
obtained  horses  and  married  a  good-tempered  and  indus¬ 
trious  woman. 

The  character  of  a  vision  could  determine  the  whole  of 
a  man’s  career.  If  he  was  promised  invulnerability,  as  in 


CROW  RELIGION 


7 


the  case  of  Scratches-face,  his  confidence  in  the  super¬ 
natural  patron’s  aid  might  lead  him  to  snap  his  fingers  at 
danger  and  to  establish  a  reputation  for  reckless  daring. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  visitant  demonstrated  the  use 
of  some  medicinal  herb,  the  seer  would  set  up  as  a  prac¬ 
titioner  in  some  branch  of  medicine  and,  if  fortune  favored 
him,  might  become  rich  from  his  patients’  fees.  Medicine- 
crow,  through  a  variety  of  revelations,  was  equally  famous 
as  a  leader  in  war  and  in  ritualistic  activity. 

A  keen  sense  for  melodramatic  tension  and  climax  is 
sometimes  displayed  by  the  narrator  of  such  experiences. 
More  particularly,  there  is  a  desire  to  stress  the  demonstra¬ 
tion  of  the  vision’s  potency.  Just  as  in  the  conversion 
stories  familiar  to  our  culture  a  sharp  cleavage  is  made  to 
divide  the  convert’s  sinful  existence  before  his  regeneration 
from  his  virtuous  mode  of  life  when  reborn,  so  the  Crow 
loves  to  contrast  his  destitute  condition  or  lack  of  distinc¬ 
tion  before  his  revelation  with  the  material  benefits  or  ex¬ 
alted  position  that  followed.  Says  One-blue-bead : 

When  I  was  a  boy,  I  was  poor.  I  saw  war  parties  come  back 
with  leaders  in  front  and  having  a  procession.  I  used  to  envy 
them  and  made  up  my  mind  to  fast  and  become  like  them. 
When  I  saw  the  vision  I  got  what  I  had  longed  for.  ...  I 
killed  eight  enemies. 

Similarly,  Gray-bull  in  narrating  his  grandfather’s  experi¬ 
ence  is  careful  to  point  out  that  until  then  his  hero  had 
achieved  nothing  in  war,  was  indeed  the  butt  of  his  joking 
relatives’  mirth  because  he  had  never  taken  part  in  raids; 
after  the  revelation,  however,  he  charged  a  group  of  en¬ 
trenched  enemies,  wrested  a  gun  from  one,  a  bow  from 
another,  and  escaped  unhurt.  “The  people  then  knew  his 
medicine  to  be  true A  Again,  Sore-tail  is  represented  as  the 


8 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


poorest  of  all  Crow  Indians  before  going  out  for  a  vision, — 
so  poor  that  he  was  even  without  a  horse  to  ride ;  after  his 
revelation  he  became  the  wealthiest  man  in  the  tribe,  own¬ 
ing  a  herd  of  from  seventy  to  a  hundred  horses. 

Some  dreams  are  rated  equivalent  to  a  vision,  apparently 
because  of  the  profound  impression  they  create.  Religious 
value  is  also  attached  to  the  dreams  of  the  officers  of  the 
Tobacco  society  before  the  planting  of  this  sacred  plant, 
and  the  site  of  the  garden  is  chosen  accordingly.  Very 
commonly  a  dream  in  which  the  conventional  symbols  of 
the  seasons  figure  is  interpreted  as  a  promise  that  the 
dreamer  shall  live  in  safety  until  the  next  return  of  the 
division  of  the  year  seen:  the  leaves  turning  yellow,  for 
instance,  would  indicate  a  lease  of  life  at  least  until  autumn. 
In  dreams  as  in  visions  the  craving  for  demonstration  is 
clear.  Little-rump  said  that  he  often  dreamt  indoors  or 
outdoors,  night  or  day,  and  that  he  generally  heard  songs : 
“Some  of  them  I  consider  sacred.  When  I  hear  a  song  and 
have  good  luck  immediately  after  that,  then  I  consider  the 
song  sacred.” 

The  Visionary’s  Good  Faith 

At  this  point  a  query  naturally  obtrudes  itself  on  the  lay¬ 
man  that  is  likely  to  be  raised  by  almost  every  account  of 
primitive  religion.  Is  there  not  in  all  these  reports  of 
spiritual  adventures  a  deliberate  attempt  to  deceive?  What 
prevents  a  man  from  returning  to  camp  with  a  lying  tale 
of  wondrous  happenings  in  order  to  gain  honor  and  pelf? 
Is  it  not  the  old  story  of  an  unscrupulous  priesthood  hood¬ 
winking  the  stupid  mob  into  blind  submission? 

Few  questions  of  theoretic  import  can  be  so  decisively 
answered  as  the  one  here  propounded;  and  the  answer  is 


CROW  RELIGION 


9 


negative.  To  turn  first  of  all  to  the  Crow,  there  neither 
exists  nor  ever  existed  a  priesthood  whose  selfish  interests 
might  be  served  by  the  maintenance  of  traditional  usage. 
Any  Crow,  no  matter  how  humble  his  status,  might  seek 
a  vision  on  a  perfect  plane  of  equality  with  the  remainder 
of  his  people.  As  for  the  veracity  of  the  accounts,  not  a 
few  of  the  Indians  admit  their  failure  to  receive  a  com¬ 
munication.  Thus,  one  witness  repeatedly  tried  to  get  a 
vision,  but  without  success.  His  retrospective  comment  is 
interesting :  “All  who  had  visions  became  well-to-do ;  I  was 
destined  to  be  poor,  that  is  why  I  had  no  visions.’’  This 
view  of  the  vision  leads  to  another  consideration.  Mani¬ 
festly  distinction  in  wealth  or  war  or  anything  else  must  be 
rare;  the  really  potent  supernatural  experiences  must  there¬ 
fore  be  correspondingly  rare,  and  the  natives  fully  realized 
the  fact.  Hence  they  were  by  no  means  prone  to  being 
duped.  When  an  untried  captain  claimed  an  inspiration 
that  would  enable  him  to  kill  a  hostile  camp  and  return  with 
raided  horses,  he  was  by  no  means  sure  of  an  enthusiastic 
response;  indeed,  he  often  found  difficulty  in  rallying  men 
to  his  standards.  Only  by  the  test  of  success  could  the 
validity  of  his  claim  be  established  to  the  satisfaction  of 
the  tribe  at  large.  The  varying  reactions  to  the  report  of 
a  vision  are  well  illustrated  in  a  legendary  tale,  which  may 
be  cited  in  abstract.  An  Indian  was  nearly  blind,  so  that 
he  and  his  wife  became  quite  destitute.  Then  the  Moon 
appeared  unbidden  and  showed  the  woman  where  horses 
could  be  captured.  Because  of  her  husband’s  condition, 
the  visionary  invited  four  braves  to  undertake  the  expedi¬ 
tion  on  his  behalf.  Two  of  them  declined,  arguing  that  if 
the  poor  couple  had  really  had  a  spiritual  blessing  they 
would  not  be  reduced  to  their  present  penury.  The  other 
pair  accepted  the  invitation :  “Though  they  are  poor,  it  may 


IO 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


come  true.”  Of  course  their  confidence  was  justified  by 
ensuing  events,  and  the  doubting  Thomases  were  put  to 
scorn.  But  on  the  basis  of  Crow  psychology,  one  attitude 
could  be  as  abundantly  propped  up  with  evidence  as  the 
other.  Sometimes  a  vision  was  deceptive ;  sometimes  it  was 
only  partly  prophetic;  and  no  man  was  wise  before  the 
event.  Hence  the  two  skeptics,  apart  from  the  author’s 
sympathy  with  his  characters,  were  hardly  culpable.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  two  other  warriors  cannot  be  accused 
of  undue  credulity,  for  one  of  the  strongest  holds  of  the 
vision  on  the  native  mind  is  precisely  that  it  can  raise  up 
the  abased. 

To  revert  to  the  visionary’s  frame  of  mind,  his  whole 
conduct  bears  the  stamp  of  sincerity.  He  gashes  and  dis¬ 
figures  himself  to  earn  the  coveted  revelation,  yet  confesses 
his  disappointment  and  tries  again.  He  observes  with 
mincing  care  the  regulations  laid  down  by  his  monitor,  how¬ 
ever  disturbing  to  his  personal  comfort.  Even  in  recent 
times  he  will  abstain  from  some  delicacy  in  order  to  main¬ 
tain  a  quite  irrational  taboo  imposed  at  the  time  of  his  fast. 
He  will  unwrap  the  memento  of  his  sacred  experience  with 
every  sign  of  profound  emotion  and  sentimental  regard. 
He  will  recount  the  happenings  not  merely  to  impress  a 
crowd  of  gaping  outsiders  but  in  the  bosom  of  his  family. 
His  essential  truthfulness  is  beyond  cavil.  As  a  half-sophis¬ 
ticated  convert  to  Catholicism  once  told  me,  “When  you 
listen  to  the  old  men  telling  their  experiences,  you  have 
just  got  to  believe  them.” 

Psychological  Analysis  of  the  Vision 

But  though  the  visionary’s  good  faith  is  vindicated,  this 
hardly  solves  the  psychological  problem.  It  leaves  us  in 


CROW  RELIGION 


the  dark  as  to  what  really  happened  when  Scratches-face’s 
trees  turned  into  enemies  and  attacked  the  mysterious  horse¬ 
men,  for  we  shall  hardly  believe  with  some  early  mission¬ 
aries  that  such  shapes  and  sounds  are  conjured  up  by  the 
devil.  A  wholly  adequate  interpretation  is  indeed  impossi¬ 
ble,  but  we  can  at  least  formulate  some  conception  of  these 
weird  happenings. 

In  the  first  place,  let  it  be  noted  that  in  the  majority  of 
cases  there  is  either  a  prolonged  fast  with  abstention  from 
drink  or  at  least  a  condition  of  unusual  nervous  strain. 
Under  these  abnormal  circumstances,  physiological  and 
psychological,  the  critical  sense  may  well  fall  into  abeyance, 
leaving  the  field  clear  for  dream  fantasies.  The  phenom¬ 
enon  involved  is,  in  other  words,  generically  that  of  a  hal¬ 
lucination.  Its  particular  character  is  molded  by  a  variety 
of  causes. 

There  is  obviously  some  correspondence  between  the  need 
felt  by  the  petitioner  and  the  blessing  vouchsafed  to  him. 
The  vision  of  a  grief-crazed  father  thirsting  to  avenge  his 
son’s  death  at  the  hands  of  the  Cheyenne  cannot  be  identical 
with  that  of  a  youthful  aspirant  to  military  renown;  and 
different  again  must  be  the  experience  of  the  poverty- 
stricken  man  praying  for  relief  from  his  distress.  A  cer¬ 
tain  scope  will  still  remain  for  individual  fancy.  Thus,  in 
the  last-mentioned  contingency,  desire  may  be  satisfied  in 
more  than  one  way:  a  man  may  become  wealthy  through 
raiding  a  hostile  camp  or  by  administering  a  newly  revealed 
herb  to  rheumatics  or  by  initiating  people  into  a  ceremonial 
secret  divulged  to  him.  Obviously  a  very  important  fact 
in  the  hallucination  is  the  fulfillment  through  auto-sugges¬ 
tion  of  the  visionary’s  wishes :  it  embodies  a  promise  that 
he  shall  attain  his  heart’s  desire.  But  clearly  the  wish  alone 
does  not  suffice:  Little-rump  fails  again  and  again  while 


12 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


Medicine-crow  as  regularly  succeeds.  That  is  to  say,  we 
must  assume  that  some  people  experience  visions  because 
of  a  temperamental  predisposition,  which  their  envious 
copyists  lack. 

Individual  peculiarities  may  manifest  themselves  in  other 
ways.  Though  in  accordance  with  customary  usage  I  have 
hitherto  spoken  of  “visions,”  visual  images  are  by  no  means 
the  only  ones  reported.  Apart  from  the  speeches  of  the 
beings  seen,  voices  are  heard  and  other  forms  of  auditory 
sensation  occur.  Motor  imagery  is  sometimes  prominent, 
as  when  the  Stars  appearing  to  an  Indian  throw  arrows, 
one  of  which  comes  wiggling  back.  Again,  a  peculiar  sus¬ 
ceptibility  to  kinesthetic  and  tactile  impressions  is  displayed 
by  a  number  of  persons,  all  of  whom  pretend  to  harbor 
animals  of  some  sort  inside  their  bodies.  Thus,  Muskrat 
asserts  that  once  while  she  was  half  awake  she  felt  things 
running  all  over;  lifting  her  blanket,  .she  caught  sight  of 
two  weasels  looking  at  her,  and  on  another  occasion  a  weasel 
came  to  her  neck,  causing  a  curious  sensation,  and  then 
entered  her  stomach. 

This  subject  of  sensory  types  requires  further  investiga¬ 
tion  and  will  be  treated  under  another  head.  Here  it  suffices 
to  point  out  that  the  experiences  of  the  Crow  Indians  under 
the  abnormal  conditions  of  the  vision-quest  reflect  individ¬ 
ual  differences  in  mental  constitution  parallel  to  those  found 
among  ourselves. 

But  though  the  visions  were  determined  by  individual 
psychology  and  by  individual  exigency  or  desire,  they  are 
very  far  from  being  wholly  intelligible  on  that  basis.  Both 
in  a  general  way  and  in  detail  the  social  atmosphere  distinc¬ 
tive  of  Crow  culture  and  specifically  Crow  conceptions 
affect  the  texture  of  the  hallucinations.  As  for  general  pur¬ 
port,  the  frequency  of  military  visions  corresponds  pre- 


CROW  RELIGION 


13 


cisely  to  the  high  regard  in  which  these  Indians  hold  brav¬ 
ery,  and  it  is  only  natural  that  those  deeds  conventionally 
rated  as  preeminently  brave,  such  as  the  capture  of  a  gun 
or  the  touching  of  an  enemy,  should  figure  conspicuously. 

This  influence  of  tribal  idealism  seems  plausible  enough. 
But  what  shall  we  say  when  one  faster  after  another  states 
that  he  gained  his  end  on  the  fourth  day?  This  is  of 
course  incredible  as  a  coincidence.  Unless  there  is  a  more 
or  less  unconscious  reinterpretation  of  the  experience  to  fit 
a  tribal  norm,  the  sameness  must  be  due  to  the  overpower¬ 
ing  influence  of  the  mystic  number  of  the  Crow,  which 
might  actually  lead  to  a  postponement  of  the  thrill  sought 
until  the  fourth  day.  In  either  case  cultural  suggestion 
operates  as  the  dynamic  agent.  Another  significant  feature 
is  the  acquisition  of  a  sacred  song.  Were  this  restricted  to 
a  few  people,  we  should  not  be  warranted  in  singling  out 
this  feature  from  other  auditory  hallucinations.  But  when 
practically  every  visionary  mentions  the  singing  of  some 
song,  we  are  plainly  dealing  with  an  accepted  model.  The 
faster  hears  a  song  because  that  is  an  integral  part  of  a 
trance :  again  the  cultural  tradition  predetermines  his  experi¬ 
ence.  Equally  common  is  the  faster’s  adoption  by  the  ap¬ 
parition;  and  here  once  more  it  is  inconceivable  to  suppose 
that  dozens  of  visionaries  would  independently  of  one  an¬ 
other  hear  themselves  greeted  with  the  reassuring  words, 
“l  will  adopt  you  as  my  child.”  To  turn  to  a  particular 
category  of  revelations,  those  imparting  invulnerability,  a 
frequent  incident  is  the  transformation  of  trees  or  rocks 
into  enemies,  who  vainly  shoot  at  the  vicariously  invulner¬ 
able  spirit  being.  This  type  of  experience  occurs  not  only 
in  the  narratives  of  recent  visions  but  also  in  traditional 
tales,  and  nothing  can  be  more  obvious  than  the  suggestion 
exercised  on  the  individual  faster’s  imagery  by  the  cultural 


14 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


pattern.  He  sees  and  hears  not  merely  what  any  faster, 
say  in  British  Columbia  or  South  Africa,  would  see  and 
hear  under  like  conditions  of  physiological  exhaustion  and 
under  the  urge  of  generally  human  desires,  but  what  the 
social  tradition  of  the  Crow  tribe  imperatively  suggests. 

Before  leaving  the  psychological  characterization  of  the 
Crow  vision,  still  another  factor,  though  less  frequently  in 
operation,  should  be  mentioned.  In  the  Sun  Dance,  which 
will  be  described  below,  the  principal  performer  was  not 
always  able  to  secure  the  coveted  communication  unaided. 
In  that  case  the  master  of  ceremonies  resorted  to  what  can 
only  be  described  as  hypnotism.  He  made  the  faster  dance 
before  an  effigy  suspended  in  the  rear  of  the  lodge  and  rivet 
his  gaze  on  this  figure,  while  the  conductor  of  the  rite  him¬ 
self  was  chanting  a  song.  After  a  while  the  doll  was  seen 
to  paint  its  face  black  in  token  of  a  promise  that  the  vision¬ 
ary  should  do  likewise  as  the  sign  of  having  killed  an  enemy. 
Suddenly  the  dancer  fell  down  in  a  swoon,  his  eyes  still 
fixed  on  the  doll. 

The  phenomenon  of  the  Crow  vision  is  thus  not  wholly 
mysterious  on  the  assumption  of  good  faith,  but  can  be 
described  in  familiar  psychological  terms,  such  as- individual 
variability,  suggestion,  and  hypnotism. 

Priesthood  and  Laity 

Since  any  tribesman  might  become  a  shaman,  to  use  a 
convenient  Siberian  term,  that  is,  might  acquire  a  spiritual 
communication,  regardless  of  his  antecedents  or  prepara¬ 
tory  training,  there  was  no  priestly  caste  but  a  fairly  large 
number  of  people  with  visionary  experiences.  The  greater 
or  lesser  dignity  of  these  depended  solely  on  the  pragmatic 
test  of  their  efficacy.  Thus  there  were  several  distinct  Sun 


CROW  RELIGION 


15 

Dance  effigies,  but  because  one  of  them  had  proved  espe¬ 
cially  potent  in  bringing  about  the  destruction  of  enemies 
it  came  to  take  precedence  of  all  the  rest,  while  another 
was  interpreted  as  based  on  a  pretended  revelation  because 
its  use  was  accompanied  by  the  death  of  the  chief  dancer’s 
wife.  Again,  there  is  the  historic  case  of  Wraps-up-his-tail 
who  declared  in  1887  that  he  had  received  power  to  drive 
the  whites  out  of  the  country  with  the  aid  of  a  magic 
sword.  He  failed,  hence  One-blue-bead  thinks  that  his 
vision  was  partly  false;  in  part  it  was  true  because  Indians 
had  seen  the  “prophet”  cut  down  pines  by  a  wave  of  his 
sword. 

Corresponding,  then,  to  the  cogency  of  their  demonstra¬ 
tion  was  the  rank  informally  assumed  by  the  visionaries. 
Men  conspicuously  fortunate  in  war  parties  would  come  to 
be  regarded  as  favorites  of  some  powerful  being  and  as 
themselves  “extraordinary”  ( maxpe ).  Yet  even  they  were 
not  generic  intermediaries  between  the  laity  and  the  Super¬ 
natural  but  had  functions  definitely  circumscribed  by  the 
character  of  their  visions.  For  example,  among  physicians 
some  were  specialists  for  childbirth  cases,  while  some  de¬ 
voted  themselves  exclusively  to  the  doctoring  of  wounds. 
Of  visionaries  blessed  with  non-therapeutic  gifts,  some 
could  defy  missiles,  others  could  locate  a  hostile  camp,  still 
others  were  inspired  to  found  a  new  ritualistic  body  or  to 
introduce  a  new  type  of  shield  decoration. 

Given  this  religious  separatism,  there  was  no  universally 
acknowledged  set  of  dogmas  nor  any  ecclesiastical  organiza¬ 
tion  that  handed  down  laws  for  the  guidance  of  the  reli¬ 
gious  consciousness.  No  one  insisted  that  a  Crow  should 
believe  in  the  creation  myth  or  subscribe  to  some  accepted 
conception  of  the  hereafter;  nor  did  a  youth  require  any 
external  prompting  to  go  out  in  search  of  a  vision.  The 


1 6 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


functions  of  the  shaman,  in  other  words,  however  impor¬ 
tant  for  the  public  weal,  were  in  their  essence  private.  The 
Sun  Dance  pledger,  the  parents  of  a  sick  child,  the  am¬ 
bitious  brave,  all  hired  a  renowned  shamanistic  specialist 
according  to  the  exigencies  of  the  occasion.  In  such  cases 
the  shaman  naturally  assumed  complete  control  as  well  as 
complete  responsibility. 

But  the  relationship  between  a  shaman  and  his  client  was 
not  a  purely  commercial  one.  In  many  cases  there  was  a 
transfer  of  power  from  the  original  visionary  to  the  man 
seeking  his  aid.  A  revelation  could  be  shared  provided 
proper  compensation  was  offered,  and  thus  the  considerable 
number  of  people  not  favored  by  a  direct  message  from 
the  spirits  could  at  least  share  in  its  blessings  through  a 
go-between.  Thus,  a  man  might  impart  to  others  the  gift 
of  invulnerability  by  teaching  them  what  to  wear  and  what 
songs  to  sing  in  battle;  another  who  had  seen  a  vision  of 
horses  might  send  out  warriors  instead  of  going  himself 
to  capture  them.  If  the  client  succeeded  in  his  ventures,  a 
definitely  sentimental  relationship  was  established  between 
him  and  the  shaman;  just  as  the  latter  had  been  adopted 
by  his  supernatural  patron,  so  he  in  turn  made  a  “son”  of 
his  protege.  Sometimes  the  adopted  person  would  at  first 
receive  a  sacred  symbol  of  the  primary  revelation,  but  was 
subsequently  empowered  to  gain  a  vision  of  his  own. 
Thus,  Flat-head-woman  prevailed  upon  the  owners  of  a 
sacred  arrow  bundle  to  prepare  a  replica  for  him,  and  for 
some  time  they  would  send  him  out  on  raids  in  accordance 
with  their  inspirations.  But  later  they  bade  him  get  visions 
of  his  own,  and  consequently  he  saw  a  grass  stalk  flying 
through  the  air,  with  the  implication  that  he  should  set  out 
for  the  spot  where  it  alighted.  Thereafter  he  had  various 
revelations  and  came  to  send  out  warriors  on  his  own  au- 


CROW  RELIGION 


1 7 

thority.  In  this  instance  a  principle  is  applied  that  finds 
still  clearer  expression  among  the  closely  related  Hidatsa 
Indians  of  North  Dakota:  the  sacred  token  of  a  revelation 
may  itself  become  the  stimulation  for  new  visions. 

Another  similarity  between  the  two  sister  tribes  may  be 
cited  as  of  psychological  interest.  As  a  rule,  the  property 
rights  involved  in  a  vision  not  only  can  be  bought,  but  they 
cannot  be  conveyed  in  any  other  way.  A  ceremonial  mode 
of  painting  the  face  was  purchased  by  a  Crow  informant 
from  his  own  mother;  and  among  the  Hidatsa  certain  hered¬ 
itary  bundles  must  be  bought  by  the  children  from  their 
father.  It  is  plausible  to  apply  to  such  cases  the  principle 
of  rationalization.  The  notion  that  a  visionary  could  sell 
a  share  in  his  “patent”  was  manifestly  of  material  benefit 
to  him,  and  in  the  more  or  less  conscious  recognition  of  this 
fact  lay  the  basis  of  the  usage.  But  when  the  rule  had 
once  been  firmly  established  it  acquired  a  sacrosanctity 
through  the  mere  force  of  conservatism  and  was  applied  as 
rigorously  to  the  nearest  blood-kin  as  to  outsiders. 

The  powerful  shamans,  then,  were  not  official  representa¬ 
tives  of  religion  acting  on  behalf  of  the  whole  community, 
but  fortunate  visionaries  who,  with  small  groups  of  follow¬ 
ers,  formed  diminutive  congregational  units  independent  of 
one  another,  though  tied  together  by  an  unformulated  com¬ 
mon  world-view.  Under  these  conditions  there  was  noth¬ 
ing  to  prevent  animosities  from  bursting  forth  between 
rival  shamans,  each  relying  on  the  support  of  his  spiritual 
patron.  Several  feuds  of  varying  degrees  of  intensity  are 
recollected,  and  I  have  myself  known  one  of  the  principals 
in  the  most  dramatic  of  all,  Big-ox,  a  man  generally  reputed 
to  have  smitten  his  adversary  with  blindness.  Big-ox  had 
seduced  a  tribesman’s  wife,  and  the  wronged  man  asked 
White-thigh  to  avenge  the  grievance  by  means  of  his  super- 


i8 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


natural  power,  of  which  a  sacred  rock  was  the  chief  symbol, 
while  Big-ox  relied  on  the  support  of  the  Thunder.  The 
next  time  Big-ox  went  on  the  warpath  he  failed  because  the 
other  shaman  had  prayed  against  him.  For  a  while  each 
of  the  two  medicine-men  thwarted  the  other’s  undertakings ; 
finally  Big-ox  cursed  his  rival  and  made  him  blind,  but 
White-thigh  retaliated  by  making  Big-ox  lose  all  his  next 
of  kin,  so  that  he  was  obliged  to  wander  from  one  camp 
to  another  in  his  old  age.  In  these  contests  it  is  of  course 
at  bottom  not  the  human  competitors  but  their  supernatural 
monitors  that  are  pitted  against  each  other,  as  when  in  a 
mythological  tale  the  hero  overcomes  the  Morning-star’s 
beneficiary  through  the  aid  of  friendly  birds. 

Supernatural  Beings 

But  who  are  these  mysterious  beings  that  appear  to  fa¬ 
vored  believers?  And  why  did  I  not  begin  the  account  of 
Crow  religion  with  a  systematic  exposition  of  the  native 
pantheon?  The  postponement  of  this  task  was  not  due  to 
inadvertency:  I  have  relegated  the  individual  spirits  to  the 
background  because  in  my  view  of  the  Crow  religious  con¬ 
sciousness  that  is  where  they  belong. 

The  Crow  Indian  approached  the  universe  with  a  sincere 
humility  that  contrasted  sharply  with  his  personal  pride 
towards  fellow-tribesmen.  He  evinced  that  sense  of  abso¬ 
lute  dependence  on  something  not  himself,  which  Schleier- 
macher  and  Feuerbach  postulate  as  the  root  of  the  religious 
sentiment.  By  himself  man  was  nothing,  but  somewhere 
in  the  world  there  were  mysterious  beings  greater  than  he, 
by  whose  good-will  he  might  rise.  The  significant  fact  to 
an  individual  was  that  during  a  spell  of  ecstasy  he  had 
come  into  contact  with  something  supernatural,  and  that 


CROW  RELIGION 


i9 


something  was  his  God  while  everything  else  sank  into  a 
relatively  subordinate  position.  Other  men  had  gods  of 
their  own  who  perchance  figured  prominently  in  tribal  myth 
or  were  intimately  linked  with  an  important  ritual;  that 
might  matter  to  them,  but  not  to  him.  For  his  religious 
consciousness  the  chicken-hawk  or  bear  through  whose  in¬ 
structions  he  had  cured  a  dying  child  or  come  unhurt  out 
of  battle  was  the  primary  religious  fact.  The  emotional 
thrill  of  his  vision,  reenforced  by  its  tried  potency,  gave 
the  apparition  a  unique  value  beside  which  everything  else 
faded  into  nothingness.  Even  the  trivial  feather  or  claw 
shown  by  the  visitant  partook  of  the  awe-inspiring  quality 
of  its  revealer,  or  rather  of  the  occasion  on  which  it  was 
revealed.  It  is  easy  to  speak  of  the  veneration  extended  to 
such  badges  of  the  individual’s  covenant  with  the  super¬ 
natural  as  fetishism,  but  that  label  with  its  popular  meaning 
is  monstrously  inadequate  to  express  the  psychology  of  the 
situation.  For  to  the  Indian  the  material  object  is  nothing 
apart  from  its  sacred  associations;  and  the  sacredness  lies 
not  in  the  preestablished  glory  of  the  particular  spirit  but 
in  the  affective  correlate  of  the  vision.  That  is  to  say,  the 
Thunderbird  is  not  first  revered  as  divine  and  then  sheds 
the  luster  of  his  godhead  upon  the  accompanying  circum¬ 
stances,  but  his  appearance  under  special  emotional  condi¬ 
tions  constitutes  his  apotheosis,  which  extends  to  the  whole 
experience.  Never  shall  I  forget  how  an  Indian  once 
prodded  my  curiosity  by  offering  to  show  me  “the  greatest 
thing  in  the  world” ;  how  he  reverently  uncovered  one  cloth 
wrapper  after  another;  and  how  at  length  there  lay  exposed 
a  simple  bunch  of  feathers, — a  mere  nothing  to  the  alien 
onlooker  but  to  the  owner  a  badge  of  his  covenant  with  the 
supernatural  world. 

In  short,  the  central  fact  of  Crow  religion  is  not  a  generic 


20 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


worship  of  Nature  or  of  some  dominant  natural  force,  but 
the  extraordinary  subjective  emotional  experience  with  all 
its  ramifications. 

This  statement,  however,  requires  modification  with  ref¬ 
erence  to  one  striking  phenomenon  in  the  universe.  The 
Sun  was  to  a  marked  degree  the  recipient  of  offerings  and 
the  object  of  supplication.  Before  setting  out  on  a  raid, 
men  would  vow  to  give  him  eagle  feathers  or  fox  skins; 
the  hide  of  an  albino  buffalo  was  invariably  consecrated 
to  the  Sun  with  a  prayer  for  longevity  and  wealth;  and  to 
erect  a  little  booth  for  sweating  oneself  was  considered  a 
ritual  in  his  honor.  It  is  therefore  not  at  all  remarkable 
that  the  Sun  should  be  the  first  being  normally  addressed 
by  the  seeker  of  a  vision.  The  remarkable  thing  is  rather 
that  he  so  rarely  came.  “Sometimes,”  said  White-arm, 
“the  Sun  himself  appeared  to  the  visionary,  but  mostly 
animals  came.  These  I  do  not  think  are  related  to  the  Sun 
at  all.  When  men  are  praying,  the  Sun  is  first  thought  of, 
but  generally  other  beings  appear.”  The  only  plausible 
explanation  for  this  anomaly  that  occurs  to  me  is  that  Sun 
worship  and  vision  concepts  may  belong  to  two  distinct 
compartments  or  layers  of  Crow  belief.  Nothing  is  more 
characteristic  of  the  Crow  than  a  deficiency  in  systematic 
thinking:  it  was  possible  for  the  Crow  mind  to  be  deeply 
influenced  by  two  quite  distinct  idea-systems  without  at¬ 
tempting  to  bring  them  into  harmony.  Nevertheless,  in 
relatively  recent  times  the  need  may  have  been  felt  for 
somehow  correlating  the  two,  with  the  result  observed :  the 
Sun  was  supplicated  for  a  revelation,  but  because  of  his 
comparatively  recent  association  with  the  vision  he  could 
not  normally  oust  the  older  type  of  visitants  from  their 
position  of  vantage.  And  as  regards  any  individual  Crow, 


CROW  RELIGION 


21 


this  personal  patron  remained  a  more  important  factor  in 
his  religious  life  than  the  Sun  himself. 

The  Sun,  to  be  sure,  means  more  to  a  greater  number  of 
persons  than  any  one  other  spirit;  he  approaches  more 
nearly  than  any  other  our  notion  of  a  Supreme  Being.  Yet 
what  astonishing  conceptions  cluster  about  him,  and  in 
what  chaos  is  Crow  theology  concerning  the  most  elemen¬ 
tary  definition  of  his  identity!  The  most  trustworthy  wit¬ 
nesses  cannot  agree  as  to  whether  he  is  identical  with  Old- 
Man-Coyote,  the  hero  of  Crow  folklore;  nay,  in  a  single 
cosmogonic  myth  there  is  constant  vacillation  on  this  point. 
Now  Old-Man-Coyote  is  in  many  episodes  of  his  cycle  a 
typical  trickster,  wallowing  in  grossness  and  buffoonery. 
Consequently  the  fact  that  the  identification  is  not  definitely 
spurned  is  in  itself  significant.  My  own  impression,  given 
for  what  it  may  be  worth,  is  that  originally  the  two  figures 
were  distinct  and  that,  possibly  because  of  their  familiarity 
with  the  legendary  character  of  Old-Man-Coyote,  the  Crow 
unconsciously  tried  to  give  greater  sharpness  to  the  vague 
outlines  of  the  solar  deity  by  merging  it  into  the  better- 
known  individuality. 

Yet  even  if  the  Sun  be  wholly  dissociated  from  Old-Man- 
Coyote,  he  remains  an  odd  sort  of  supreme  being.  In  fact, 
he  is  not  really  supreme  at  all :  there  is  nothing  to  preclude 
his  being  worsted  by  Morning-star  or  the  human  hero  of 
a  traditional  tale.  Again,  he  looms  as  the  creator  by  hav¬ 
ing  some  birds  dive  into  the  sea  for  the  submerged  earth 
and  by  fashioning  human  beings  out  of  mud ;  but  he  is  not 
the  source  of  all  being.  Apart  from  the  cryptic  Old-Man- 
Coyote,  the  sacred  Tobacco  (usually  identified  with  a  star) 
and  the  sacred  Rock  appear  as  entities  of  explicitly  inde¬ 
pendent  origin.  Finally,  from  an  ethical  point  of  view, 


22 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


he  is  sometimes  benignant  but  also  turns  malevolent  towards 
the  whole  tribe  when  his  mistress  is  seduced  by  a  boy  hero, 
and  is  even  represented  as  boiling  and  eating  the  flesh  of 
brave  warriors. 

If  the  Sun  is  a  shadowy  and  inconsistent  deity,  this  ap¬ 
plies  with  even  greater  force  to  other  spirits.  Morning- 
star,  for  example,  is  commonly  identified  with  Old- 
woman’s-grandson,  the  child  of  the  Sun  and  an  Indian 
maiden.  He  rids  the  world  of  various  monsters,  triumph¬ 
ing  through  his  father’s  aid,  and  is  ultimately  translated 
to  the  sky.  Possibly  because  of  his  solar  lineage  some  In¬ 
dians  regularly  prayed  to  him,  yet  others  vigorously  denied 
that  he  was  ever  addressed  by  suppliants !  As  a  further 
sample  of  Crow  consistency  may  be  cited  one  informant’s 
statement  that  Sun  and  Morning-star  were  pitted  against 
each  other  in  a  trial  of  strength  and  that  Morning-star’s 
proteges  vicariously  won  the  game. 

The  Thunder,  commonly  identified  with  a  species  of 
eagle,  doubtless  made  a  deep  impression  on  the  Crow  mind 
and  was  the  patron  of  several  natives  even  during  the  last 
few  decades.  Yet  in  one  myth  this  powerful  deity  requires 
a  human  hunter’s  assistance  to>  slay  his  traditional  enemy, 
a  water-monster;  and  he  is  defied  with  impunity  by  an 
Indian  named  Big-iron,  who  has  been  adopted  by  a  spirit 
in  the  guise  of  an  aged  man. 

It  is  useless  to  proceed  with  this  enumeration.  Evidently 
a  diversified  host  of  beings,  whether  identified  with  natural 
forces  or  with  the  apparitions  of  visions  or  with  what  not, 
may  function  as  deities.  But  there  is  no  systematization, 
no  coordination  or  subordination  that  has  fixed  validity: 
the  spirits  seem  to  move  in  a  variety  of  distinct  universes, 
and  their  religious  importance  varies  with  the  individual 
Crow.  Gray-bull’s  grandfather  was  once  visited  by  two 


CROW  RELIGION 


23 


birds,  which  turned  into  a  man  and  a  woman  but  after 
giving  him  instructions  retransformed  themselves  into 
birds.  These  were  not  conceived  as  messengers  or  servants 
of  some  deity:  they  were  themselves  possessed  of  mys¬ 
terious  potency  and  capable  of  making  their  adopted  son 
invulnerable.  Why  should  the  pragmatic  beneficiary  fret 
over  their  possible  inferiority  to  other  beings? 

It  may  not  be  superfluous  to  add  that  while  among  the 
motley  throng  of  spiritual  patrons  who  bless  the  Crow 
Indians  ghosts  occasionally  occur,  these  are  indeed  asso¬ 
ciated  with  the  whirlwind  and  the  owl  but  never  with  the 
surviving  souls  of  deceased  relatives.  Ancestor-worship 
in  any  form  is  totally  lacking. 

Ritual 

There  were  numerous  ritualistic  observances,  some  of 
relatively  simple  private  character,  others  elaborated  into 
complex  public  festivals.  The  definite  procedure  followed 
when  a  revelation  is  sought  is  of  course  itself  ritualistic, 
but  the  altogether  unique  significance  of  the  vision  appears 
as  soon  as  we  examine  a  representative  set  of  rites. 

To  begin  with  a  relatively  simple  type,  that  associated 
with  the  sweat-lodge.  The  ancient  Crow  did  not  resort  to 
this  form  of  vapor  bath  for  mere  pastime  or  even  for 
purely  therapeutic  purposes.  It  was  considered  a  sacred 
thing,  and  the  little  dome-shaped  structure  of  willows  might 
be  erected  only  by  one  who  had  secured  an  appropriate 
revelation  or  had  purchased  the  privilege  from  a  visionary 
of  this  type.  Nay,  even  those  entitled  to  build  a  sweat- 
lodge  would,  according  to  one  authority,  put  it  up  solely 
after  special  spiritual  counsel  to  that  effect.  The  sweat- 
lodge  was  most  commonly  conceived  as  an  offering  to  the 


24 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


Sun  and  linked  with  prayers  in  the  form  of  a  conditional 
pledge.  A  man  afflicted  with  disease  might  pray,  “My 
father’s  kinsman  (the  usual  mode  of  addressing  the  Sun), 
if  I  recover,  I  will  erect  a  sweat-lodge”;  and  corresponding 
vows  were  uttered  by  a  warrior  eager  to  obtain  booty  on 
a  new  raid  or  to  strike  a  blow  against  the  enemy.  Since 
four  is  the  ceremonial  number,  it  is  customary  to  undergo 
the  sweating  in  four  successive  doses.  Rocks  heated  for 
hours  outside  the  little  hut  are  carried  to  a  central  pit,  then 
the  willow  structure  is  covered  with  blankets  so  as  to  be¬ 
come  pitch-dark,  and  one  of  the  inmates,  all  of  whom  are 
practically  naked,  pours  water  on  the  red-hot  rocks.  For 
several  minutes  the  celebrants  sweat,  then  the  blanket  at  one 
side  is  raised,  allowing  them  to-  cool  off  before  the  second 
sweating  process.  Each  time  more  water  is  poured  on  than 
before,  causing  more  and  more  vapor  and  proportionately 
greater  perspiration.  Each  stage  is  also  associated  with 
a  prayer  formula.  Medicine-crow,  for  example,  may  have 
dreamt  of  the  snow  on  the  ground,  an  image  interpreted  to 
mean  that  he  and  his  kin  shall  live  to  see  the  winter  season. 
He  announces  his  dream  and  the  other  sweaters  thank  him, 
hoping  that  they  also  shall  reach  that  point  of  time.  Others 
announce  their  respective  dreams  when  the  cover  is  lifted, 
and  after  the  final  airing  all  dash  to  the  nearest  stream  and 
plunge  into  its  waters. 

Passing  to  the  more  complex  ceremonialism  of  the  To¬ 
bacco  society,  we  find  that  the  whole  procedure  is  domi¬ 
nated  by  the  vision-concept.  The  tobacco  in  question  is  a 
species  of  Nicotiana,  but  not  that  smoked  by  these  Indians ; 
in  other  words,  it  is  raised  for  exclusively  religious  pur¬ 
poses.  It  is  planted  on  behalf  of  the  entire  tribe,  but  while 
every  Crow  in  some  measure  shares  in  the  benefits  of  the 
performances  the  right  to  plant  is  restricted  to  persons  duly 


CROW  RELIGION 


25 

initiated  into  the  Tobacco  organization.  This  originated 
in  a  vision  and  the  subsequent  adoption  of  co-celebrants  by 
the  original  visionary.  But  in  course  of  time  there  were 
supplementary  revelations,  and  accordingly  at  least  over 
twenty  distinct  chapters  sprang  into  existence,  each  embrac¬ 
ing  the  person  blessed  by  a  new  vision  and  the  people  of 
either  sex  whom  he  allowed  to  participate  through  adoption. 
Though  the  immediate  benefits  were  purely  gain  in  social 
standing,  the  Indians  down  to  the  most  recent  times  have 
been  willing  to  pay  heavy  fees  for  the  privilege  of  initia¬ 
tion.  In  the  adoption  ceremonies  I  witnessed  in  1910  and 
1 91 1  the  novices’  kinswomen  were  seen  staggering  under 
the  load  of  goods  offered  to  the  sponsor’s  chapter  in  partial 
payment  of  the  new  member’s  debt.  The  tyro  is  instructed 
for  several  months  in  the  songs  given  him  and  is  finally 
led  in  solemn  procession  to  a  specially  constructed  lodge, 
where  for  hours  he  and  others  dance  the  Tobacco  dance, 
gently  swaying  their  bodies  and  executing  characteristic 
movements  with  their  arms.  Immediately  after  the  dance 
or  on  the  following  morning  the  novice  takes  a  vapor  bath 
together  with  his  song  instructors,  and  finally  he  is  per¬ 
mitted  to  take  from  the  members  of  the  adopting  chapter 
some  packages  of  the  precious  seed  as  well  as  other  sacred 
objects.  For  some  of  these,  as  well  as  for  certain  highly 
specialized  ritualistic  privileges,  additional  fees  are  paid. 
One  informant,  for  example,  gave  a  horse  for  the  right  of 
sitting  next  to  the  door.  Exorbitant  prices  were  also  paid 
for  the  more  important  prerogative  of  erecting  the  adoption 
lodge. 

The  above  is  the  merest  sketch  of  a  highly  interesting 
performance,  diversified  by  the  recounting  of  military  ex¬ 
ploits  and  a  short  dramatic  representation  of  how  a  warrior 
coming  home  from  a  successful  expedition  reports  the  vie- 


26 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


tory,  describes  the  Crow  tobacco  garden  seen  on  his  return 
trip,  and  prophesies  an  abundant  crop. 

After  the  acquisition  of  his  seed  the  novice  becomes  a 
full-fledged  member  entitled  to  share  in  the  next  spring 
planting.  First  his  seed  will  be  mixed  with  various  in¬ 
gredients  by  the  official  Mixer  of  his  chapter,  then  all  the 
members  of  the  society  proceed  to  the  garden  site  dreamed 
by  one  of  the  Mixers  and  plant  their  seed,  each  in  his  al¬ 
lotted  space.  The  procession  to  the  garden  follows  a  tradi¬ 
tional  style :  the  members  walk  abreast,  carrying  their  sacred 
objects  in  bags  and  preceded  by  a  woman  who  carries  a 
holy  otter  skin,  but  in  one  locality  on  the  strength  of  a 
vision  this  emblem  has  been  changed  to  a  crane.  After  four 
stops  with  ceremonial  songs  and  smoking  the  members  en¬ 
trust  their  bags  to  swift  runners,  who  race  to  the  site  and 
deposit  the  sacred  sacks  there.  The  ground  is  prepared  by 
burning  (nowadays  by  plowing),  then  the  seeds  are  dropped 
into  holes  dug  for  them,  songs  are  sung,  and  the  members 
dance  and  eat  before  dispersing.  After  the  ceremony  peo¬ 
ple  are  wont  to  lie  at  the  garden  in  hope  of  a  revelation  and 
are  likely  to  hear  Tobacco  songs. 

The  planting  is  followed  by  several  inspections  of  the 
tobacco  and  at  last  the  seeds  are  harvested  with  relatively 
little  ceremony. 

An  examination  of  the  Tobacco  ritual  demonstrates  with 
great  clearness  the  importance  of  the  vision.  From  the  in¬ 
stitution  of  the  order  in  the  beginning  to  the  tiniest  varia¬ 
tion  in  procedure  within  recent  years  everything  is  inter¬ 
preted  as  the  result  of  visionary  experiences;  the  member¬ 
ship  comprises  the  visionaries  and  those  to  whom  by  a  sort 
of  apostolic  succession  they  have  transmitted  their  powers; 
even  the  site  of  the  planting  is  not  chosen  without  super¬ 
natural  sanction.  On  the  other  hand,  the  data  illustrate 


CROW  RELIGION 


27 


equally  well  the  dominance  of  the  basic  Crow  values.  Peo¬ 
ple  want  to  join  either  for  general  human  benefits — to  gain 
recovery  from  illness  or  rise  from  poverty — or  for  the  sim¬ 
ple  hankering  after  social  prominence;  and  to  secure  the 
latter  end  they  cheerfully  render  material  sacrifices  of 
property. 

If  the  vision  looms  large  in  the  Tobacco  ceremonies,  it 
is  all-important  in  the  Sun  Dance.  The  Crow  performed 
this  festival  ostensibly  from  a  single  motive,  the  desire  for 
revenge.  If  a  tribesman  had  suffered  the  loss  of  a  son  or 
brother  at  the  hands  of  the  Dakota  and  could  not  shake  off 
his  grief,  he  would  pledge  a  performance  of  the  Sun  Dance. 
Since  his  purpose  was  revenge,  he  naturally  sought  the  in¬ 
dispensable  prerequisite  for  a  successful  military  venture,  a 
vision.  That  could  be  procured  with  greatest  likelihood  of 
success  by  erecting  the  Sun  Dance  lodge  with  the  aid  of  the 
whole  tribe  and  dancing  before  a  sacred  doll  till  he  saw  the 
image  of  a  bleeding  enemy.  There  were  several  dolls,  each 
the  result  of  a  vision  by  its  owner  or  one  of  his  predeces¬ 
sors,  and  the  pledger  chose  one  of  them  to  instruct  him 
and  become  the  high-priest  of  the  performance.  As  soon 
as  the  mourner  beheld  a  vision  promising  the  death  of  an 
enemy,  the  ritual  abruptly  terminated,  for  that  vision  was 
the  avowed  be-all  and  end-all  of  the  performance,  though 
a  vast  number  of  additional  but  theoretically  extraneous 
features  made  it  a  spectacle  of  interest  to  the  onlookers. 
Even  these  unessential  performances  revolved  in  large  part 
about  the  vision-concept.  Thus,  many  young  men  consid¬ 
ered  the  occasion  a  proper  one  for  seeking  a  revelation  on 
their  own  account  and  would  undergo  the  usual  austerities 
publicly  for  purely  individual  ends. 

The  vision  is  thus  the  factor  that  integrates  the  whole  of 
Crow  ritualism;  and  it  is  interesting  to  see  that  as  an  ex- 


28 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


planatory  principle  it  is  extended  to  other  tribes.  The 
closely  related  Hidatsa  were  observed  to  lack  the  Tobacco' 
ceremony  and  to  have  a  Sacred  Pipe  ritual  originally  un¬ 
known  to  the  Crow.  Crow  philosophy  formulates  the  facts 
by  declaring  that  when  the  sister  tribes  parted  their  leaders 
had  two  distinct  revelations,  one  seeing  the  Tobacco,  the 
other  the  Pipe. 


Dogma  and  World-view 

Crow  religion  does  not  obligate  its  votaries  to  accept  a 
fixed  set  of  tenets  concerning  the  phenomena  of  the  uni¬ 
verse.  A  man  would  not  be  denounced  as  a  heretic  be¬ 
cause  he  rejected  the  current  theory  of  creation,  and  in  the 
absence  of  an  official  pronunciamento  on  the  subject  there 
is  nothing  to  prevent  a  number  of  varying  versions.  When 
we  recollect  that  the  cosmogonic  tale  of  the  earth-divers 
is  found  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  it  seems  a  likely 
supposition  that  the  Crow  did  not  originate  the  essence  of 
their  creation  story  but  borrowed  it  from  another  tribe, 
possibly  not  many  centuries  ago.  Whether  it  superseded 
an  earlier  conception  or  was  adopted  in  the  absence  of  any 
creation  myth,  the  theory  of  an  alien  origin  bears  witness 
to  the  trifling  part  relevant  ideas  play  in  the  religious  life 
of  the  people. 

What  applies  to  cosmogony  holds  in  even  greater  degree 
for  conceptions  of  the  hereafter.  Like  other  peoples,  primi¬ 
tive  and  civilized,  the  Crow  believe  in  a  survival  of  the  soul, 
but  the  subject  is  of  no  emotional  interest  to  the  majority 
of  these  Indians  and  has  hardly  exercised  their  imaginations 
at  all.  Such  notions  as  are  current  can  be  traced  to  the 
accounts  of  men  who  are  believed  to  have  died  but  who  re¬ 
turned  to  consciousness.  The  general  upshot  of  such  re- 


CROW  RELIGION 


29 


ports  is  that  the  spirits  of  the  dead  are  encamped  like  In¬ 
dians  but  are  better  off  than  the  living.  They  send  back 
people  who  for  some  reason  offend  them  or,  it  may  be, 
from  sheer  caprice.  One  narrative  associates  the  spirit 
land  with  the  west.  In  no  case  are  the  departed  souls  as¬ 
sociated  with  one  of  the  more  or  less  established  deities,  such 
as  the  Sun  or  the  Thunderbird ;  and  never  is  there  the  faint¬ 
est  suggestion  that  the  deeds  of  this  world  must  be  accounted 
for  in  another  or  that  the  good  shall  be  separated  from  the 
wicked. 

This  leads  to  the  consideration  of  how  religion  and  ethics 
are  related  among  the  Crow.  It  would  certainly  be  strange 
if  two  such  fundamental  aspects  of  culture  remained  wholly 
unconnected,  yet  their  relationship  is  of  an  extremely  tenu¬ 
ous  sort.  The  Sun,  as  dissociated  from  Old-Man-Coyote, 
does  not  play  the  part  of  a  divine  lawgiver  nor  could  he 
serve  as  a  uniform  paragon  of  virtue  from  the  aboriginal 
point  of  view.  Old-Man-Coyote  is  indeed  the  founder  of 
many  customs  and  the  instructor  in  such  arts  as  fire-making 
and  stone  technique ;  but  he  does  not  lay  down  elements  of 
the  tribal  ethics,  which  in  fact  he  flagrantly  violates,  as 
when  he  marries  his  own  daughters  or  gains  access  to  his 
mother-in-law. 

Ethical  imperatives  are  sometimes  issued  by  the  beings 
who  appear  to  visionaries.  In  order,  however,  to  appraise 
such  edicts  at  their  true  value  it  is  necessary  to  recall  their 
setting.  The  most  frequent  desire  on  the  visionary’s  part 
is  social  distinction,  which  in  itself  tends  to  preclude  anti-so¬ 
cial  behavior.  When  a  warrior  is  bidden  to  kill  an  enemy 
or  to  protect  the  women  and  children  of  his  camp,  he  is 
told  to  do  what  promotes  his  own  as  well  as  the  tribal  in¬ 
terest.  There  is  indeed  the  interesting  legendary  case  of 
the  benevolent  Dwarf  who  indignantly  withdraws  protec- 


30 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


tion  from  the  camp  tyrant  he  had  taken  under  his  wing: 
“  'Try  to  benefit  your  people,’  I  said  to  him.  'Take  away 
and  possess  their  desirable  property,’  I  did  not  say.  'Kill 
them  continually,’  I  did  not  say.”  But  no  such  loving-kind¬ 
ness  towards  the  people  at  large  is  manifested  when  in  other 
instances,  traditional  or  historic,  the  spirit  supports  a  fa¬ 
vorite  regardless  of  the  merits  of  the  case,  as  in  the  stories 
of  shamanistic  rivalry. 

In  one  sense,  it  is  true,  definite,  stringent  rules  of  con¬ 
duct  are  laid  down  by  the  visitant.  A  man  owning  a  cer¬ 
tain  kind  of  shield  must  shift  its  position  according  to  the 
sun’s  movements.  The  custodian  of  a  sacred  arrow  must  not 
knock  off  the  snow  from  his  lodge, — he  must  gently  scrape 
it.  Gray-bull  is  told  not  to  eat  bird’s  eggs,  and  Muskrat 
must  not  allow  any  one  to  bump  against  her.  Dire  conse¬ 
quences  would  flow  from  disregard  of  these  injunctions, 
even  when  transgression,  as  in  the  instance  last  cited,  is  in¬ 
dependent  of  the  visionary’s  volition. 

Subjectively  these  utterly  capricious  commandments  were 
undoubtedly  among  the  most  important  principles  of  indi¬ 
vidual  conduct;  and  I  am  convinced  that  the  reaction  to  a 
breach  of  this  personal  code  psychologically  comes  closer  to 
what  we  call  sin  than  anything  else  in  Crow  life.  But  this 
purely  personal  and  potentially  anti-social  morality  is 
manifestly  unconnected  with  anything  normally  included 
under  the  heading  of  ethics.  The  Crow  did  have  a  clear-cut 
code  for  social  conduct,  and  this  may  be  said  to  be  almost 
wholly  dissociated  from  religious  sanctions. 

To  summarize  the  foregoing,  Crow  religion  is  not  a  dog¬ 
matic  faith ;  it  imposes  no  doctrines,  cosmological  or  eschato¬ 
logical;  it  does  not  prescribe  rules  of  conduct  that  possess 
general  validity.  It  seems  subjectivism  raised  to  the  highest 
power. 


CROW  RELIGION  31 

But  this  extreme  individualism  is  after  all  only  theoretical. 
The  individual  Crow  is  indeed  free  from  the  dictates  of  a 
priesthood,  but  he  is  in  the  grip  of  a  more  potent,  precisely 
because  it  is  a  more  subtle,  leadership.  The  stock  of  ideas 
and  emotions  characteristic  of  his  social  group  fashions  his 
whole  cosmic  outlook  as  it  fashions  the  very  pattern  of  his 
vision.  There  are  certain  conceptions  which  from  a  child 
he  receives  as  unchallengeable,  even  though  they  are  not 
formulated  as  so  many  propositions ;  and  while  they  may  in 
themselves  be  completely  devoid  of  religious  value  they  in¬ 
evitably  frame  and  tincture  whatever  acquires  such  value. 
To  give  a  positive  definition  of  what  Dr.  Thurnwald  calls 
the  primitive  Denkart  (mode  of  thinking)  or  Geistesv erf as- 
sung  (mental  constitution)  2  is  not  so  easy  as  to  sense  it 
from  such  concrete  exhibitions  as  are  yielded  by  the  visionary 
experiences.  Negatively,  it  seems  easy  enough  to  contrast  it 
with  our  modern  world-view,  to  define  it  as  an  eminently  ir¬ 
rational  one,  that  is,  one  that  does  not  involve  the  checking 
of  associations  by  the  spirit  of  critical  inquiry.  No  woman 
has  ever  been  known  to  handle  a  Sun  Dance  doll,  hence 
Pretty-enemy,  who  disobeyed  the  rule,  must  die  or  suffer  the 
loss  of  some  dear  relative  as  an  automatic  punishment.  A 
horseman  seen  in  a  vision  escapes  from  the  enemy,  hence 
the  visionary  will  be  invulnerable.  To  draw  a  representa¬ 
tion  of  one’s  enemy  and  puncture  the  heart  is  to  injure  the 
man  figured.  These  are  all  actual  illustrations  of  how  the 
Crow  mind  applies  the  principle  of  causality.  The  implicit 
philosophy  of  reality,  imbibed  with  the  mother’s  milk,  limits 
and  predetermines  the  individual’s  religious  views,  just  as  the 
social  standards  current  in  his  community  predetermine  his 
life-values  and  the  wishes  he  seeks  to  fulfill  through  religion. 
In  contrast  with  this  body  of  received  notions  and  ideals  the 
scope  for  individual  creativeness  seems,  from  an  outsider’s 


32 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


point  of  view,  pitiably  meager.  Thus  even  the  most  ex¬ 
treme  subjectivism  may  merge  in  abject  servility,  not  to  the 
authority  of  a  personal  dictatorship,  but  to  the  impersonal, 
though  none  the  less  real,  dominance  of  folk-belief  and  folk- 
usage. 


References 

1  The  account  given  above  is  based  on  the  author’s  own  re¬ 
searches.  Most  of  the  data  will  be  found  in  the  following  publi¬ 
cations:  Lowie,  1915;  id.,  1919;  id.,  1922.  The  reader  may 
also  be  referred  to  the  author’s  contributions  to  Parsons,  1922: 
17-43* 

2  Thurnwald :  296. 


f 


CHAPTER  II 


EKOI  RELIGION1 
Sorcery 

When  several  well-known  men  have  died  in  succession  in 
an  Ekoi  village,  suspicion  is  naturally  aroused  that  they  are 
the  victims  of  black  magic,  and  some  friendless  woman  may 
be  pounced  upon  as  the  probable  culprit.  Illness,  when  not 
traceable  to  the  anger  of  offended  spirits,  is  likewise  derived 
from  the  practices  of  witch  or  wizard.  An  unsuccessful 
hunter  lays  his  bad  luck  to  the  charge  of  sorcery  and  seeks  to* 
break  the  spell  by  a  rite  of  conciliation.  Prospective  mothers 
shield  themselves  from  the  inroads  of  sorcerers  by  special 
charms,  and  childless  women  similarly  lift  the  bane  of 
sterility.  Towns  are  abandoned  for  fear  of  a  half-witted 
woman’s  curse. 

What  seems  strangest  in  the  relevant  notions  of  the  abo¬ 
rigines  is  the  maniacal  dread  that  even  the  next  of  kin  may 
practice  sorcery  in  disguise.  Chief  Nenkui  accuses  his  own 
daughter  of  afflicting  him  with  blindness  by  touching  his  eye, 
a  husband  charges  his  wife  with  bewitching  her  own  chil¬ 
dren,  a  grandmother  is  hounded  into  suicide  by  the  per¬ 
sistent  suspicion  that  she  has  killed  her  son’s  offspring. 

These  strange  obsessions  are  fostered  by  a  deep-rooted 
belief  in  shape-shifting.  Who  can  recognize  a  witch  when 
she  assumes  the  form  of  a  bat  or  owl,  and,  seated  on  the  roof 
of  a  house,  sucks  out  her  sleeping  victim’s  heart?  Such  ani¬ 
mals  or  birds  are  the  sorcerer’s  familiar  spirits  and  can  be 
exorcised  and  extracted  from  his  body  by  a  qualified  priest. 

33 


34 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


There  are  other  cases  of  metamorphosis  that  may  or  may  not 
be  coupled  with  evil  magic.  Every  man  has  two  souls,  one 
of  them  dwelling  constantly  in  the  body,  the  other  capable  of 
being  sent  forth  to  possess  some  wild  animal  in  the  bush. 
A  man  need  merely  drink  of  the  magic  potion  transmitted  in 
his  family  as  the  means  for  turning  into  the  hereditary 
animal  linked  with  his  kin  group.  Here,  too,  there  is  chance 
for  clandestine  wickedness.  One  man  will  destroy  his  neigh¬ 
bor's  goats  or  cows  as  a  were-leopard,  while  another  drags 
people  under  water  in  the  convenient  disguise  of  a  crocodile. 

Sorcerers  assemble  at  night  in  a  sort  of  witches’  sabbath, 
dance  a  few  feet  above  ground,  simultaneously  growing  to 
gigantic  stature,  and  jointly  plot  the  death  of  a  victim.  They 
are  invisible  to  ordinary  mortals,  but  those  endowed  with 
“four  eyes”  have  seen  them  celebrating  in  the  moonlight  and 
may  bring  them  to  confess. 

It  is  essential  to  understand  the  hysterical  fear  of  evil 
magic  that  haunts  the  Ekoi  in  order  to  judge  fairly  the  treat¬ 
ment  meted  out  to  its  practitioners.  From  the  aboriginal 
point  of  view,  sorcerers  are  prospective  or  actual  murderers 
insidiously  destroying  their  neighbors,  nay,  their  own  blood. 
Small  wonder,  then,  that  those  convicted  of  such  malpractice 
receive  scant  consideration  and  are  summarily  put  out  of 
the  way.  It  is  rather  to  the  credit  of  the  natives  that  in¬ 
stead  of  resorting  to  lynch  law  they  usually  conform  to  the 
juridical  standards  established  among  them,  determining 
guilt  by  the  orderly  processes  of  divination  and  the  ordeal. 

The  diviner  must  be  sought,  for  while  affliction  is  perhaps 
most  frequently  the  result  of  sorcery,  other  causes  have  to 
be  reckoned  with,  such  as  the  wrath  of  neglected  ancestral 
spirits.  In  order  to  become  established  as  a  specialist  in 
divination,  a  novice  must  be  initiated  by  a  master.  The 
charm  consists  of  two  pairs  of  strings,  each  composed  of 


EKOI  RELIGION 


35 


four  “shells,”  in  reality  the  dried  seed-coverings  of  a  sacred 
tree.  These  are  laid  side  by  side  on  either  hand  of  the  di¬ 
viner,  and  each  pair  must  fall  in  exactly  the  reverse  manner 
of  the  other  to  secure  certainty,  otherwise  the  process  is  re¬ 
peated.  There  are  other  elements  of  the  diviner’s  stock-in- 
trade, — the  egg  of  a  bush  fowl,  the  quill  and  tail  of  a  porcu¬ 
pine,  white  chalk  for  good  luck,  a  boar’s  tooth  to  ward  off 
evil  influences,  the  small  horns  of  a  duikerbok  because  that 
animal  has  “four  eyes,”  that  is,  can  discern  phantom  shapes 
that  remain  unseen  by  normal  mortals.  The  total  number 
of  ways  in  which  the  shells  can  fall  is  considerable,  and  each 
has  its  own  interpretation  by  the  diviner’s  code.  Thus,  one 
shell  turned  upward  while  the  rest  face  in  the  reverse  way 
designates  a  young  man,  three  shells  up  and  the  rest  down 
indicate  food,  and  so  forth. 

For  final  ordination  of  a  tyro  the  old  expert  chews  the 
leaves  and  bark  of  various  sacred  trees,  spitting  small  quan¬ 
tities  into  the  shells,  which  are  placed  high  up  in  the  roof- 
thatch,  where  they  may  hold  communion  with  Obassi  Osaw, 
one  of  the  two  great  tribal  deities.  After  a  while  they  are 
removed  and  buried  at  a  cross-road  to  talk  with  ghosts  and 
with  Obassi  Nsi,  the  second  great  god.  Some  days  later 
the  new  diviner  digs  them  up  again  and  is  set  up  as  a  fully 
trained  member  of  the  profession,  entitled  to  the  traditional 
fee  of  threepence  in  kind  and  threepence  in  money. 

But  the  mere  declaration  of  the  diviner,  while  presumptive 
evidence  of  guilt,  does  not  convict  without  a  formal  ordeal, 
administered  either  by  pouring  boiling  palm  oil  on  the  sus¬ 
pect’s  hands  or,  more  commonly,  by  giving  him  a  potion 
made  from  a  poisonous  wild  bean.  On  the  native  theory 
the  innocently  accused  will  not  take  harm  in  either  case, 
while  the  guilty  sorcerer  is  supposed  to  die.  The  drink  is 
certainly  likely  to  cause  intense  anguish  when  of  the  standard 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


36 

consistency,  but  an  excessive  or  a  deficient  dose  merely  pro¬ 
duces  vomiting,  and  if  the  bean  has  been  previously  boiled 
the  same  result  is  effected  with  pain  but  without  fatal  con¬ 
sequences.  All  this  naturally  places  the  alleged  criminal  at 
the  mercy  of  the  officials  in  charge. 

Highly  interesting  is  the  psychological  condition  of  the 
people  concerned  in  these  proceedings.  Though  personal  ani¬ 
mosity  naturally  must  be  supposed  to  have  often  asserted  it¬ 
self  in  accusations  and  trials  of  witchcraft,  the  evidence  for 
the  general  good  faith  of  the  plaintiffs  is  quite  convincing. 
Mr.  Talbot,  a  district  commissioner  to  whom  we  are  in¬ 
debted  for  an  excellent  account  of  the  Ekoi,  gives  even  Nen- 
kui  a  relatively  good  character,  though  in  his  hysterical  fear 
of  sorcery  this  chief  seems  to  have  decimated  his  people, 
driving  two  of  his  own  wives  and  his  own  children  into 
undergoing  the  bean  ordeal  and  inflicting  untold  misery  on 
his  subjects  at  large.  Not  less  significant  is  the  mental  state 
of  the  defendants.  Our  authority  graphically  describes  the 
profound  distress  of  a  poor  woman  charged  with  the  mur¬ 
der  of  the  grandchildren  she  had  eagerly  longed  for,  and  the 
reactions  of  another  accused  of  having  killed  her  own  chil¬ 
dren:  “I  ate  the  .  .  .  bean,  so  that,  if  I  were  a  witch  and 
had  killed  the  children,  I  might  die  also,  for  I  did  not  want 
to  live  if  I  had  harmed  my  little  ones.”  In  this  utterance 
there  is  no  longer  the  complete  self-assurance  of  offended 
innocence.  Under  the  hectoring  suggestion  of  the  chief  and 
her  whole  social  environment  the  accused  is  no'  longer  cer¬ 
tain  of  herself  and  solves  the  mental  conflict  by  willingly 
submitting  to  the  ordeal.  In  this  connection  reported  cases 
of  confession  also  demand  attention.  It  is  easy  enough  to 
understand  that  a  woman  unable  to  bear  the  physical  agony 
of  the  boiling  oil  should  end  the  torture  by  admitting  her 
guilt.  But  how  can  we  account  for  the  story  of  a  chief’s  son 


EKOI  RELIGION 


37 

who  declared  that  he  and  his  father  had  turned  into  croco¬ 
diles  in  order  to  kill  two  women  crossing  a  river?  Or  the 
confession  of  a  mother  that  she  had  killed  one  of  her  own  in¬ 
fants  as  well  as  her  sister?  Or  the  wife  who  owned  to  pre¬ 
venting  a  sore  on  her  husband’s  ankle  from  healing  because 
every  night  a  snake  issued  from  her  mouth  to  lick  the 
wound  ? 

In  order  both  to  understand  the  underlying  mental  opera¬ 
tions  and  to  ward  off  a  prematurely  condemnatory  verdict 
on  the  benighted  people  who  can  entertain  a  belief  in  witch¬ 
craft  at  all,  it  is  desirable  to  turn  to  our  own  past.  Not  in 
the  so-called  Dark  Ages,  but  in  the  centuries  following  “the 
revival  of  learning”  the  belief  in  black  magic  gained  ascend¬ 
ancy  to  a  point  never  known  before  or  since  and  led  to  the 
death  of  thousands  of  victims,  not  through  the  ebullition  of 
popular  wrath  but  by  the  solemn  machinery  of  duly  consti¬ 
tuted  legal  authorities.  Barely  five  generations  separate  us 
from  the  time  when  a  maidservant — the  contemporary  of 
Hume,  Kant,  Voltaire,  and  Goethe — was  burnt  at  Glarus, 
Switzerland,  in  1782,  for  bewitching  a  child.  Let  any  one 
inclined  to  pass  judgment  on  the  cruelty  of  the  Ekoi  read 
the  official  account  of  the  witch-trial  at  Zug  in  1737,  by 
which  half-a-dozen  poor  women,  ranging  in  age  from  twen¬ 
ty-eight  to  seventy,  were  executed  or  fiendishly  tortured  to 
death  on  the  accusation  of  a  demented  girl  of  seventeen,  who 
professed  herself  to  have  held  intercourse  with  the  devil 
since  the  age  of  four.2  There  is  nothing  among  the  Ekoi 
even  remotely  approaching  in  brutality  and  senselessness  the 
treatment  of  Kathri  Gill,  one  of  the  victims  of  the  law  on 
this  occasion.  After  she  had  been  flogged,  racked,  and  con¬ 
fined  for  days  in  a  cell  that  neither  permitted  her  to  stand 
upright  nor  to  lie  at  full  length,  refusing  all  the  time  to 
confess  her  dealings  with  Satan,  new  incriminating  evidence 


38  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

was  discovered.  She  had  eked  out  a  livelihood  as  a  peddler 
and  her  stock-in-trade  was  found  to  include  a  bag  of  white 
powder  and  a  box  containing  some  salve.  Could  anything 
be  more  obvious  than  that  the  powder  was  the  poison  with 
which  she  summoned  hailstorms  and  destroyed  cattle  ?  Or 
that  the  salve  was  smeared  on  her  broomstick  in  preparation 
for  her  diabolic  flights  ?  Her  assertion  that  the  substances 
were  nothing  but  oatmeal  and  butter  were  rejected  by  the 
court.  Nevertheless  the  executioner  was  ordered  to  test  the 
supposed  poison  by  feeding  it  to  a  dog.  The  experiment 
failed  to  reveal  any  harmful  consequences.  Thereupon  the 
half-witted  accuser  declared  that  God  had  naturally  pro¬ 
tected  the  innocent  beast  from  harm.  In  vain  Kathri  Gill 
offered  to  partake  of  all  the  substances  herself.  Her  peti¬ 
tion  was  denied  and  the  process  of  torturing  her  was  re¬ 
sumed.  It  is  essential  to  note  that  the  accuser  herself, 
though  apparently  immune  from  torture  by  virtue  of  her 
great  service  to  the  State,  reaped  no  material  benefits 
from  her  allegations:  she  merely  had  the  satisfaction  of 
being  executed  with  the  sword  instead  of  perishing  by 
fire. 

In  the  trial  of  Zug,  as  in  most  of  the  Ekoi  cases,  the  ele¬ 
ment  of  rapacity  is  completely  lacking  as  a  motive  for  the 
prosecution :  the  Swiss  victims  were  uniformly  poor  women, 
and  on  the  other  hand  it  is  not  likely  that  Nenkui’s  daughter 
had  any  property  that  the  chief,  her  father,  lacked.  Nor  in 
the  light  of  our  detailed  information  can  the  desire  for  re¬ 
venge  have  played  a  prominent  part  in  either  set  of  cases. 
In  both  areas  we  meet  with  the  phenomenon  of  self -accusa¬ 
tion,  which  at  first  blush  may  seem  especially  enigmatic.  But 
in  any  of  our  large  cities  to-day  the  report  of  a  sensational 
crime  leads  forthwith  to  a  volley  of  wholly  imaginary  and 
often  demonstrably  false  confessions,  which  the  police  auto- 


EKOI  RELIGION 


39 


matically  disregard.  The  psychological  explanation  is  doubt¬ 
less  the  one  offered  by  Dr.  Stoll.  There  are  in  every  society 
individuals  to  whom  the  suggestion  of  any  idea  immediately 
produces  a  sense  of  reality,  so  that  they  are  quite  incapable 
of  distinguishing  what  they  have  merely  thought  or  heard 
from  what  they  have  experienced  as  eyewitnesses.  Given 
the  firm  folk-belief  in  sorcery,  given — even  without  any  spe¬ 
cial  vindictiveness — that  emotional  ambivalence  towards  the 
most  closely  related  kin  which  psycho-analysts  describe,  the 
mental  processes  involved  in  either  European  or  Ekoi  so¬ 
ciety,  however  obscure  in  detail,  are  at  least  intelligible  in 
principle.  A  stray  wave  of  resentment  against  a  husband 
may  lead  to  a  momentary  wish  to  bewitch  him;  in  the  ab¬ 
sence  of  scientific  principles  of  causation  any  accident  that 
may  befall  him  will  inevitably  be  associated  with  that  wisff; 
and  the  recollection  may  produce  a  definite  sense  of  guilt. 
This  feeling  is  naturally  reenforced  by  the  notions  prevalent 
in  the  social  environment ;  nay,  it  may  be  not  merely  stimu¬ 
lated  but  awakened  by  the  accusation.  The  charge  of  sorcery 
strikes  a  resonant  key  when  it  brings  into  consciousness  sen¬ 
timents  of  hitherto  latent  animosity  or  coincides  with  a 
transient  mood  of  bitterness.  But  even  apart  from  such 
potent  affective  agencies,  the  mere  dominance  of  a  set  of  be¬ 
liefs,  backed  by  all  the  received  authorities  of  the  tribe,  suf¬ 
fices  not  merely  to  convince  the  fear-ridden  mob  but  to  shake 
the  defendant’s  faith  in  his  own  innocence.  What  Sumner 
writes  of  European  conditions  is  equally  applicable  to  West 
Africa : 

Many  perfectly  sound-minded  and  innocent  women  could  not 
be  sure  that  they  were  not  witches.  They  had  had  dreams  sug¬ 
gested  by  the  popular  notions,  or  had  suffered  from  nervous  af¬ 
fections  which  fell  in  with  the  popular  superstitions.3 


40 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


The  Ekoi  phenomena  can  be  rightly  evaluated  only  when 
we  align  them  with  their  European  parallels.  If  they  illus¬ 
trate  the  disheartening  impotence  of  human  reason  in  the 
face  of  prestige  suggestion,  they  constitute  at  the  same  time 
a  cogent  if  unflattering  proof  of  the  psychic  unity  of  man¬ 
kind. 


Ghosts 

The  magical  machinations  of  neighbors  possessed  by 
familiar  spirits  are  not  the  only  weird  phenomena  that 
darken  the  Ekoi’s  existence.  The  deceased,  too,  may  become 
a  menace ;  for  an  evil  ghost  will  smite  a  passer-by  in  the  face, 
causing  fatal  lock-jaw,  and  even  one’s  own  forbears  may 
avenge  neglect  by  sending  illness.  A  very  considerable  por¬ 
tion  of  Ekoi  religion  centers  in  the  conceptions  of  ghosts 
and  the  ritual  practiced  to  avert  or  nullify  their  anger. 

According  to  native  psychology,  the  soul  of  a  person  is 
somehow  connected  with  his  breath  and  leaves  him  when  he 
expires.  Diminutive  so  long  as  it  dwells  within  his  breast, 
it  becomes  rarefied  on  his  death  so  as  to  expand  to  the  size 
and  form  of  his  body.  But  in  this  condition  it  remains  in¬ 
visible  to  all  but  the  “four-eyed”  who  have  the  gift  of  per¬ 
ceiving  spirits.  The  shadow  cast  by  a  live  man  is  also  re¬ 
garded  as  the  shape  of  the  soul.  There  is  evidently  some 
confusion  in  the  mind  of  the  Ekoi,  for  while  he  is  capable 
of  declaring  that  every  man  has  but  one  soul  he  quite  defi¬ 
nitely  describes  how  a  second  soul  can  be  sent  into  the  bush 
to  possess  an  elephant,  crocodile,  buffalo,  or  what  not.  Simi¬ 
lar  contradiction  confronts  us  regarding  the  immortality  of 
the  soul :  it  is  said  to  be  indestructible,  yet  in  the  folk-tales 
ghosts  are  slain  and  recover  not  by  their  inherent  spiritual 


EKOI  RELIGION 


4i 


quality  (ghosts  require  food  like  mortals)  but  through  the 
external  application  of  some  magically  potent  medicine. 

It  is  not  only  the  bush-soul  that  can  go  forth  in  search  of 
new  fields  of  activity.  In  trances  the  souls  of  men,  and 
more  frequently  of  women,  fly  away  to  visit  remote  places ; 
and  the  fully  initiated  members  of  the  secret  society  known 
as  Egbo  can  summon  the  shadow  forms  of  living  men  known 
to  be  far  away. 

Animals,  trees,  rocks,  weapons,  and  household  utensils  as 
well  as  human  beings  are  credited  with  souls,  and  when  food 
dedicated  to  the  spirits  remains  unaltered  to  the  sight  it  is 
because  the  supernatural  beings  are  capable  of  sucking  out 
the  “astral”  essence  of  the  offering. 

Normally  the  souls  of  the  dead  descend  underground  to 
join  the  great  Earth  deity,  Nsi,  and  only  return  to  this  world 
in  exceptional  cases.  But  some  spirits,  either  because  the 
persons  associated  with  them  died  a  violent  death  or  from 
some  special  cause,  roam  about  for  an  indefinite  period,  en¬ 
tering  the  towns  for  several  hours  after  midnight.  Special 
locations  are  haunted  by  the  ghosts,  among  them  two  lakes 
shunned  by  the  natives,  who  would  not  even  track  game  in 
the  vicinity  for  fear  of  arousing  the  vengeance  of  the  snakes 
and  crocodiles  credited  with  the  guardianship  of  these  sacred 
waters. 

Ghosts  are  by  no  means  all  bad,  and  it  is  even  asserted 
that  evil  ones  are  usually  accompanied  by  more  benevolent 
spirits  to  prevent  mischief.  The  folk-tales  likewise  yield  tes¬ 
timony  to  the  kindly  sentiments  of  which  the  departed  are 
capable,  for  sometimes  they  befriend  visitors  and  bestow 
valuable  powers  upon  them.  Nevertheless  the  dominant 
note  in  the  native  attitude  towards  these  spirits  is  fear.  The 
Ekoi  are  afraid  of  the  dark  because  they  do  not  wish  to  em 


42 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


counter  ghosts.  Ghosts  sometimes  eat  human  beings.  Even 
the  newly  deceased  have  to  buy  food  from  older  ghosts  with 
the  decorative  scars  on  their  bodies.  People  take  pains  to 
exclude  ghosts  by  wearing  amulets  or  keeping  lamps  lit  or 
by  burning  spices ;  and  they  go  to  great  trouble  to  conciliate 
them. 

Even  the  ancestral  spirits  cannot  be  depended  upon,  for 
they  send  disease  when  they  feel  neglected.  “I  do  not  know,” 
said  the  head  priest  of  one  of  the  numerous  cults,  “if  ghosts 
can  do  harm  to  the  living,  but  I  always  sacrifice  yams  and 
plantains  to  my  father’s  spirit  so  that  I  may  not  fall  sick, 
and  to  ask  him  to  protect  my  farms.  About  once  a  year,  too, 
generally  when  it  is  time  to  cut  ‘bush’  for  our  farms,  I  sacri¬ 
fice  to  my  mother,  for  we  know  that  ghosts  are  hungry  just 
as  we  are.”  Similar  offerings  are  presented  to  the  ancestors 
at  funerals,  at  the  building  of  a  new  house,  or  after  a  return 
from  a  victorious  raid.  In  cases  of  illness  the  diviner  de¬ 
termines  not  merely  whether  the  cause  be  sorcery  or  the 
spirits  of  the  patient’s  forbears,  but  whether  the  paternal  or 
the  maternal  kin  are  responsible,  and  proceeds  to  call  the 
names  of  all  individual  ancestors  till  the  identity  of  the 
disease-giver  is  ascertained.  When  the  operator  has  dis¬ 
covered  what  the  offended  ghost  demands,  his  client  goes 
before  the  town,  pours  out  the  required  libation,  deposits 
the  food,  and  prays  as  follows :  “Here  is  what  you  asked  of 
me.  Do  not  let  me  be  sick  any  more.” 

Such  observances  suggest  ancestor-worship,  but  it  should 
be  noted  that  ghosts  other  than  ancestors  are  also  propiti¬ 
ated,  that  in  fact  the  entrance  to  every  Ekoi  town  is  framed 
with  offerings  to  the  ghosts  at  large,  in  the  hope  of  keeping 
them  from  coming  in.  Moreover,  the  whole  series  of  rites 
and  beliefs  about  ghosts,  though  tremendously  important,  by 
no  means  exhausts  the  totality  of  Ekoi  religion. 


EKOI  RELIGION 


43 


Mysterious  Potency 

Mr.  Talbot  writes : 

The  term  “Njomm,”  is  so  elusive  as  to  defy  definition,  but 
as  far  as  may  be  gathered  from  the  vague  conception  of  the 
Ekoi,  it  includes  all  uncomprehended,  mysterious  forces  of 
Nature. 

It  is  apparently  applied  both  substantively  and  as  an  ad¬ 
jective  and  corresponds  fairly  closely  to  the  Crow  word 
maxpe.  Our  authority  translates  it  by  what  seems  to  be  a 
West  African  pidgin  English  expression,  but  I  see  no  reason 
for  unnecessarily  introducing  such  terms  and  shall  try  to 
cover  the  underlying  idea  by  such  unexceptionable  English 
words  as  “mysterious,”  “supernatural,”  “weird,”  and,  when 
hard  put  to  it,  shall  fall  back  upon  the  classical  Ekoi 
njomm.  Let  us  examine  the  range  of  application  of  the 
concept. 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  when  ghosts  are  killed 
in  the  folk-tales  they  fail  to  revive  by  any  inherent  spiritual 
attribute  of  theirs.  What  resuscitates  them  is  the  rubbing 
on  of  a  mysterious  substance  with  revival  power,  so  that  the 
Lame  Boy  who  functions  as  the  good  fairy  of  Ekoi  folklore 
succeeds  in  bringing  to  life  an  infant  hero  by  clandestinely 
applying  the  same  device  used  by  the  ghosts  among  them¬ 
selves.  Similarly  what  makes  ghosts  invisible  in  a  particu¬ 
lar  story  is  the  application  of  some  weird  black  material  to¬ 
gether  with  a  relevant  wish  formula ;  when  a  spying  human 
outcast  possesses  himself  of  the  same  substance  and  utters 
the  same  charm  he,  too,  becomes  endowed  with  supernatural 
powers  and  is  capable  of  preventing  the  ghosts  from  feast¬ 
ing.  To  cite  another  instance  of  supernatural  power  vested 
in  what  we  consider  an  inanimate  object,  chalk  is  capable  of 


44  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

bringing  good  luck  to  mortals  whose  bodies  are  marked  with 
it,  and  accordingly  it  is  rubbed  over  a  newborn  infant. 
Again,  a  tree  with  magical  properties  seems  to  be  sacred  to 
every  town,  and  among  trees  the  cotton  tree  is  the  one  most 
feared.  Specifically,  it  is  addressed  in  prayer  and  presented 
with  a  gift  when  an  Ekoi  desires  to  revenge  himself  upon  an 
enemy.  He  will  then  call  aloud  the  victim  s  name,  and  the 
tree  may  consummate  his  wish  by  seizing  and  imprisoning 
the  enemy’s  child.  As  recently  as  1908  a  man  accused  his 
own  brother  of  having  tried  to  imprison  their  sister  in  a 
tree. 

Since  everything  that  exists,  including  manufactured  ar¬ 
ticles,  has  a  soul,  it  would  hardly  do  to  separate  personal 
from  impersonal  manifestations  of  mysterious  power;  yet 
in  some  cases  the  personal  aspect  seems  to  dwindle  away, 
while  in  others  we  are  clearly  dealing,  to  all  intents  and  pur¬ 
poses,  with  individual  beings  wielding  superhuman  potency. 
When  the  ghosts  are  said  to  have  been  resuscitated  by  the 
black  njomm,  the  personal  quality  is  certainly  not  in  the  fore¬ 
ground  of  the  native’s  consciousness.  Not  so  when  a  hunter 
leaving  for  the  chase  makes  the  customary  sacrifice  to  his 
njomm  or  breaks  his  spell  of  ill-luck  by  a  prayer;  nor  when 
a  njomm  is  first  invoked  to  smite  a  tribesman  with  disaster 
and  in  more  relenting  mood  adjured  to  lift  the  curse.  The 
impression  derived  from  a  careful  reading  of  the  evidence — 
and,  indeed,  supported  by  our  authority  himself — is  that  the 
Ekoi  mind  places  in  one  category  both  personal  and  imper¬ 
sonal  manifestations  of  extraordinary  power.  The  differ¬ 
ence  between  the  two  is  at  all  events  often  far  from  well- 
defined:  the  supernatural  power  seems  indeed  personal,  yet 
unindividualized;  it  is  a  personification  of  the  votary’s  wish 
but  a  blindly  mechanical  personification.  Mfam,  for  exam¬ 
ple,  the  oldest  njomm,  protects  villages  from  theft;  but  he  or 


EKOI  RELIGION 


45 


it  is  so  remorseless  a  guardian  that  even  a  person  who  inno¬ 
cently  tastes  a  single  plantain  without  the  owner’s  permission 
must  die. 

However  this  may  be,  it  seems  clear  that  while  there  is  an 
indefinite  number  of  mysteriously  potent  agencies,  many  of 
them  are  concentrated  into  personal  form  and  their  effigies 
represent  the  focus  for  so  many  distinct  cults,  some  familial, 
others  local,  still  others  linked  with  clubs  or  fraternities.  The 
personal  character  of  these  supernatural  agencies  is  also  sug¬ 
gested  by  an  important  analogy  with  ghosts :  disease,  when 
not  caused  by  sorcery,  is  the  result  either  of  offended  njomm 
or  of  neglected  ancestors ;  and  since  witchcraft  is  itself  an 
effect  of  possession,  we  may  say  that  disease  is  traced  to  the 
agency  of  spiritual  beings  and  that  the  njomm  as  spirits  quite 
naturally  figure  among  pathogenic  instruments.  Now  to  say 
this  is  essentially  equivalent  to  charging  the  votaries  of  the 
disease-causing  njomm r with  sorcery;  and  in  some  cases  there 
is  explicit  statement  to  that  effect.  For  example,  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  Mfepp  cult  use  their  power  exclusively  to  injure 
others,  whether  they  be  tribal  enemies  or  townspeople  who 
have  aroused  their  resentment,  such  as  dilatory  debtors.  Sim¬ 
ilarly,  those  connected  with  the  Nsann  njomm  are  powerful 
poisoners  and  can  destroy  their  enemies  by  lightning.  That 
is  to  say,  the  salient  fear  of  evil  magic  has  been  connected 
by  the  Ekoi  mind  with  the  concept  of  extraordinary  power. 
This  association,  however,  has  not  uniformly  been  inter¬ 
preted  in  a  fashion  detrimental  to  human  interests, — quite 
the  contrary,  indeed,  has  taken  place.  As  Talbot  points  out, 
irrespective  of  local  differences  the  protection  against  witch¬ 
craft  ranks  as  the  foremost  attribute  of  dominant  njomm. 
For  example,  the  destructive  agency  of  Nsann  can  be  over¬ 
come  by  the  power  of  Eja.  Here  we  have  an  epitome  of 
what  is  most  essential  in  the  whole  matter.  Sorcery  is  so 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


46 

overshadowing  an  influence  in  native  life  that  the  operation 
of  mysterious  power  is  very  largely  made  to  hinge  on  the 
cause  and  the  prevention  of  witchcraft. 

Gods 

Ekoi  theology  is  in  a  sense  dualistic :  while  there  is  a  host 
of  supernatural  beings,  two  take  precedence  in  all  ceremonies 
or  prayers,  even  when  these  are  primarily  associated  with 
ancestors  or  other  divine  powers.  These  two  major  deities 
are  Osaw  and  Nsi,  the  former  associated  with  the  sky,  the 
latter  with  the  earth.  Both  are  at  present  conceived  as  male, 
but  Mr.  Talbot  finds  some  hints  of  the  formerly  feminine 
character  of  Nsi.  Between  them  these  two  deities,  when 
originally  living  together,  made  all  things  in  the  world,  but 
later  they  agreed  to  separate  and  took  up  their  abode  in  the 
heavens  and  under  the  earth,  respectively.  Osaw  is  cruel; 
sometimes  he  sends  too  much  rain,  at  others  not  enough; 
then  again  he  will  terrify  and  kill  human  beings  with  thun¬ 
der  and  lightning.  Nsi,  on  the  other  hand,  is  benevolent 
and  ripens  the  crops.  All  witchcraft  and  all  bad  njomm  are 
interpreted  as  having  been  sent  by  Osaw,  while  all  good 
mystic  power  is  traced  to  Nsi. 

Sometimes  people  pray  to  the  latter  to  destroy  Ojje  (sorcery), 
for  it  is  well  known  that  no  witchcraft  can  stand  against  his 
might. 

All  of  this  smacks  of  Manichsean  philosophy,  but  nothing  is 
more  remote  from  the  Ekoi  mind  than  the  conception  of  a 
cosmic  conflict  between  good  and  evil,  with  the  fate  of  man¬ 
kind  as  a  possible  stake.  Nsi  and  Osaw  are  not  to  be  set  at 
loggerheads  by  so  paltry  a  point  of  difference  as  their  re¬ 
spective  attitudes  towards  humanity.  They  are  the  best  of 


EKOI  RELIGION 


47 


friends,  and  Nsi  orders  people  to  make  offerings  to  his  celes¬ 
tial  counterpart.  However,  the  benevolent  Earth  deity  is 
regarded  as  the  stronger,  and  of  the  emblems  found  in  most 
of  the  native  habitations  by  far  the  majority  are  sacred  to 
Nsi. 

The  above  is  the  notion  of  these  deities  entertained  in  ab¬ 
stract  discussion,  but  it  is  by  no  means  strictly  borne  out  by 
the  spontaneous  evidence  of  the  folk-tales  in  which  Osaw 
and  Nsi  play  a  part.  The  “good”  Nsi  no  less  than  the  malev¬ 
olent  Osaw  is  pictured  as  cruelly  discriminating  against  an 
inoffensive  but  unloved  son  and  plotting  his  death ;  and  what 
is  at  least  equally  remarkable,  this  supreme  god  against 
whom  no  sorcery  can  prevail  is  on  occasion  completely 
thwarted  in  his  wicked  designs.  Still  stranger  is  the  tale  of 
how  Nsi,  after  having  been  bribed  into  sending  Lamb  to  his 
destruction,  is  duped  and  himself  killed  by  a  falling  tree. 
It  is  also  interesting  to  find  Lamb  warning  Nsi  of  a  great 
njomm!  After  all  this,  it  is  not  surprising  that  Nsi  should 
at  times  fear  Osaw,  irrespective  of  his  theoretical  superior¬ 
ity  ;  and  here  another  discrepancy  must  be  noted :  while  in 
philosophical  exposition  the  Ekoi  represents  his  two  chief 
deities  as  closely  allied  by  bonds  of  friendship,  they  appear, 
at  least  in  two  myths,  as  bitter  enemies.  Needless  to  say, 
it  is  no  profound  ethical  difference  that  divides  them,  but 
the  purely  personal  grievance  suffered  by  Osaw’s  children  at 
Nsi’s  hands.  Sometimes  it  almost  appears  as  though  Osaw 
and  Nsi  have  exchanged  parts  in  folklore,  for  while  Nsi  may 
indulge  in  wanton  cruelty,  Osaw  is  capable  of  benevolence,  as 
in  giving  water  to  mankind,  who  had  formerly  been  obliged 
to  do  without.  But  such  loving-kindness  is  episodic,  and  the 
god  conforms  more  nearly  to  his  norm  when  he  chastises 
Lame  Boy  for  his  Promethean  theft  of  fire  or  envies  Tor¬ 
toise’s  wisdom.  As  for  his  supernatural  potency,  Osaw,  like 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


48 

his  terrestrial  compeer,  may  be  outwitted  by  adversaries  and 
even  slain  by  the  son  whom  he  had  unnaturally  sought  to  de¬ 
stroy. 

In  short,  the  two  great  deities  of  the  Ekoi  are  no  more 
consistently  conceived  than  the  Sun  or  Old-Man-Coyote  of 
the  Crow.  Neither  is  uniformly  good;  and,  however  power¬ 
ful  they  may  be,  somewhere  in  the  universe  there  are  stores 
of  mystic  potency  they  have  never  tapped  and  which  can  be 
used  to  frustrate  their  designs. 

Compared  with  other  peoples,  the  Ekoi  pay  little  attention 
to  celestial  phenomena;  even  the  Sun,  though  addressed  in 
daily  prayer  at  sunrise,  merely  serves  as  an  intermediary  be¬ 
tween  the  supplicant  and  the  two  main  deities.  One  other 
spirit,  however,  must  be  singled  out  from  the  host  of 
njomni, — the  goddess  Nimm,  who  appears  in  the  triple  form 
of  woman,  snake,  and  crocodile.  She  is  the  guardian  of 
farms  and  crops,  and  figures  above  all  as  the  women’s  deity. 
Her  priestesses  are  famed  for  their  skill  in  divination,  and 
their  sorority,  from  which  men  are  rigorously  excluded,  is 
invested  with  such  a  halo  of  superstition  by  the  natives  that 
it  ranks  as  the  equal  of  the  Egbo,  the  great  men’s  organiza¬ 
tion.  Nimm  will  avenge  wrongs  to  her  followers,  and  when 
a  man  is  seized  by  a  crocodile  it  may  be  in  answer  to  an 
abused  wife’s  petition.  Every  eighth  day  is  a  rest-day  in 
honor  of  Nimm,  and  if  any  woman  should  venture  to  break 
the  rule  and  farm  her  plot,  her  labors  would  be  destroyed 
by  the  beasts  that  are  the  goddess’s  slaves.  As  might  be  an¬ 
ticipated  from  her  animal  associations,  Nimm  is  a  cruel 
deity ;  when  the  great  yam  festival  is  held  in  her  honor,  she 
craves  offerings  in  compensation  for  the  fertilization  of  the 
land,  and  any  man  entering  the  water  during  a  period  of 
seven  days  is  slain  as  a  sacrifice  to  the  goddess. 


EKOI  RELIGION 


49 


Ritual 

Some  of  the  most  characteristic  features  of  Ekoi  ritualism 
have  already  been  mentioned  incidentally  in  the  preceding  ac¬ 
count.  In  contrast  to  anything  reported  for  the  Crow,  there  is 
an  elaborate  procedure  of  divination  and  a  tendency  to  pacify 
the  spirits  by  bloody  offerings,  usually  of  such  domesticated 
animals  as  goats  and  cows,  but  sometimes  even  of  human 
beings.  Other  elements  of  West  African  ceremonialism  are 
not  so  foreign  to  Plains  Indian  usage.  Thus,  when  we  learn 
of  the  pot,  the  queerly  shaped  pieces  of  carved  wood,  the 
sacred  knife,  and  the  white  feathers  cherished  by  every 
Nimm-worshiper  in  a  special  shrine  in  her  room,  we  are  re¬ 
minded  of  the  miscellaneous  assemblage  of  sacred  objects 
often  united  in  a  Crow  medicine-bundle. 

Still  more  reminiscent  of  the  Plains,  though  rather  dif¬ 
ferent  in  both  spirit  and  details,  are  the  more  or  less  dramatic 
performances  of  the  numerous  Ekoi  societies,  some  of  them 
executed  in  the  course  of  the  funeral  rites  in  honor  of  a  de¬ 
ceased  man  by  his  fellow-members,  others  as  part  of  the 
normal  business  of  these  organizations  or  by  way  of  enter¬ 
tainment.  Even  the  children  have  clubs  which  practice  pub¬ 
lic  performances,  and  the  mingling  of  sportive  and  religious 
aspects  in  these  ceremonies  is  well  illustrated  by  an  experi¬ 
ence  of  Mr.  Talbot.  A  group  of  children  appeared  in  a 
pageant  before  him,  hoping  to  be  rewarded  for  their  pains 
with  some  small  coin.  As  is  customary  in  corresponding 
processions  of  the  adult,  one  participant  had  his  face  con¬ 
cealed  with  cloth,  and  the  British  spectator  innocently  pulled 
off  the  covering,  which  seemed  to  handicap  the  little  player. 
At  once  the  children  uttered  a  cry  of  protest,  while  the  mum¬ 
mer  covered  his  face  with  his  hands  and  “the  elders  has¬ 
tened  up  to  rearrange  the  veils  about  him,  volubly  explain- 


V 


50  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

in g  that  the  face  of  the  ‘image’  must  never  be  seen  by  his 
companions.” 

Among  the  men’s  organizations  the  Egbo  takes  prece¬ 
dence.  It  is  a  fraternity  subdivided  into  at  least  seven 
grades  with  increasing  entrance  fees.  There  is  a  head  priest 
for  the  whole  order,  with  lesser  chiefs  for  the  various  grades 
and  other  functionaries.  Every  village  has  its  Egbo  house ; 
indeed,  the  first  thing  on  moving  to  a  new  site  is  to  erect  a 
shed  to  mark  the  site  of  the  permanent  club  lodge.  In  the 
interior  there  are  carved  pillars  and  a  long  cut  stone  sacred 
to  Nimm.  The  ritual,  which  is  imperfectly  known  to  sci¬ 
ence,  is  extremely  intricate,  involving  many  distinct  cults 
and  diverse  sacrificial  observances.  The  utmost  mystery 
was  formerly  maintained  in  the  performance  of  certain  cere¬ 
monies,  and  intruders,  even  though  by  mere  chance,  might 
be  flogged  to  death  or  otherwise  dispatched.  In  spite  of  this 
secrecy,  or  rather  as  part  and  parcel  of  the  correlated  ter¬ 
rorization  of  outsiders,  there  were  spectacular  public  per¬ 
formances,  at  which  each  degree  exhibited  distinctive 
dances,  tunes,  and  costumes.  At  least  one  chief  performer, 
evidently  designed  to  impersonate  a  supernatural  being,  ap¬ 
peared  in  a  long  garment  furnished  with  eye-holes,  robing 
him  from  crown  to  toe,  and  usually  topped  by  a  mask.  The 
player  was  accompanied  by  one  or  more  assistants,  some  of 
whom  were  generally  prepared  to  beat  spectators  or  those 
who  had  offended  the  fraternity.  The  Egbo  is  charged  with 
political  and  judicial  functions  of  the  utmost  importance  to 
the  tribe,  but  for  our  purpose  only  the  ceremonial  associa¬ 
tions  are  considered  here,  and  even  they  in  the  most  summary 
fashion. 


EKOI  RELIGION 


5i 


Comparison  of  Ekoi  and  Crow  Religion 

The  essence  of  Crow  religion  was  found  in  the  visionary 
experience.  That  of  the  Ekoi  is  not  so  easily  summarized.  On 
the  intellectual  side,  at  least,  it  is  difficult  to  derive  the  main 
features  from  any  one  source  of  origin.  That  there  is  in  the 
individual  consciousness  an  overpowering  sense  of  the  ex¬ 
traordinary,  sometimes  more,  sometimes  less  clearly  individ¬ 
ualized,  is  true  enough ;  but  this  hardly  suffices  for  a  charac¬ 
terization  when  we  recall  that  this  very  same  recognition  of 
the  supernatural  has  led  to  such  divergent  results  among  the 
Crow.  What  seems  to  set  off  the  faith  of  the  Ekoi  most 
sharply  is  not  this  or  that  type  of  practice,  this  or  that  form 
of  belief,  but  an  emotional  undertone  that  somehow  pene¬ 
trates  the  whole  of  their  religion.  Theirs  is 

a  land  full  of  mystery  and  terror,  of  magic  plants,  of  rivers  of 
good  and  ill  fortune,  of  trees  and  rocks  ever  lowering  to  engulf 
unwary  wayfarers ;  where  the  terror  of  witchcraft  stalks  abroad, 
and  where,  against  this  dread,  the  most  devoted  love  or  faithful 
service  counts  as  naught. 

This  somberness  of  outlook  we  should  seek  in  vain  among 
the  Crow. 

When  from  such  general  impressions  we  turn  to  concrete 
elements,  a  fact  of  the  utmost  significance  confronts  us. 
Most  of  the  phenomena  that  occur  in  either  tribe  are  also 
found  in  the  other,  but  they  are  quite  differently  weighted . 
For  example,  the  individual  psychic  experience  that  looms 
so  large  in  Crow  life  is  not  lacking  among  the  Ekoi. 
Wraiths  of  dead  friends  appear  in  the  dark  to  warn  of  dan¬ 
ger  or  to  demand  offerings.  In  the  dead  of  night  men  see 
some  of  their  acquaintances  holding  solemn  conclave  and 
suddenly  assuming  the  shapes  of  ducks  and  elephants.  At 


52  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

the  jeopardy  of  her  life  a  woman  confesses  having  a  snake 
familiar,  which  appears  to  her  in  her  sleep.  A  person  mys¬ 
teriously  linked  with  the  Oji  tree  will  suddenly  hear  it  call¬ 
ing  and  must  set  out  post-haste  by  night  or  day  to  respond 
to  the  summons,  regardless  of  circumstances,  as  when  a 
warder  deliriously  leaves  his  post  to  dash  into  the  bush: 
“To-night  I  was  very  tired  and  lay  down  on  my  bed.  In 
my  sleep  my  tree  began  to  call  ‘Oji,  Oji.’  I  woke  and  still 
heard  it  call.  So  I  started  up  to  run  out  into  the  night.  It 
always  calls  about  the  time  of  the  new  yams,  sometimes  ear¬ 
lier,  sometimes  later.  When  they  tried  to  stop  me  it  called 
louder  and  louder.  So  I  fought  them  to  get  away  and  go  to 
my  tree.”  It  would  be  foolish  to  deny  that  such  experi¬ 
ences  may  be  of  the  utmost  importance  to  the  individual. 
Nevertheless  it  remains  true  that  they  are  far  from  having 
the  universal  and  pivotal,  because  socially  standardized,  sig¬ 
nificance  attaching  to  them  in  the  Plains  of  North  America. 

On  the  other  hand,  such  a  phenomenon  as  divination  is 
not  wholly  absent  among  the  Crow,  for  occasionally  a  war¬ 
rior  will  read  his  fate  by  examining  the  blood  of  a  badger 
mixed  with  that  of  a  buffalo ;  but  the  procedure  figures  so 
rarely  that  in  my  general  account  it  was  possible  to  ignore  it 
completely.  Evil  magic  was  certainly  practiced  by  some  of 
the  Crow,  but  it  was  not  often  leveled  against  a  tribesman, 
let  alone  a  relative,  hence  that  abiding  terror  of  sorcery  even 
in  the  midst  of  the  Ekoi  family  circle  has  no  parallel  in 
Crow  society.  Furthermore,  Crow  sorcery  is  practically  al¬ 
ways  linked  with  the  favoritism  displayed  by  the  tutelary 
spirit  acquired  in  a  vision,  so  that  its  associations  are  quite 
different  from  those  of  its  equivalent  in  West  Africa.  Simi¬ 
larly,  the  belief  in  ghosts  bears  a  quite  different  character  in 
the  two  areas:  it  exists,  indeed,  among  the  Crow,  but  with 
only  an  infrequent  religious  association  based  on  the  sporadic 


EKOI  RELIGION 


53 


appearance  of  ghosts  in  visions;  among  the  Ekoi  it  consti¬ 
tutes  one  of  the  most  obtrusive  phases  of  their  adjustment 
to  the  supernatural. 

The  result  of  this  brief  comparison  is  an  important  one. 
Merely  to  catalog  the  occurrence  of  such  and  such  beliefs 
and  observances  is  a  futile  enterprise.  When  we  know  that 
a  tribe  practices  witchcraft,  believes  in  ghosts,  recognizes  the 
mysterious  potency  resident  in  inanimate  nature,  or,  it  may 
be,  the  supremacy  of  some  one  supernatural  being,  we  know 
precisely  nothing  concerning  the  religion  of  the  people  con¬ 
cerned.  Everything  depends  on  the  interdependence  of  the 
several  departments  of  supernaturalism,  on  the  emotional 
weighting  that  attaches  to  each  and  every  one  of  them. 

References 

1  This  sketch  is  based  on  Talbot:  13-88,  165-202,  230-241,  et 
passim. 

2  Stoll :  385-389,  397-43°* 

3  Sumner :  119. 


CHAPTER  III 


BUKAUA  RELIGION 1 
Magic 

Sorcery  does  not  play  as  devastating  a  part  in  the  Huon 
Gulf  littoral  of  New  Guinea  as  in  West  Africa,  yet  the 
belief  in  its  reality  is  sufficiently  strong.  Though  there 
is  no  evidence  that  the  dread  of  its  practitioners  invades 
the  intimacy  of  the  family  circle,  outsiders  are  potential 
agents  of  evil,  and  the  natives  cautiously  remove  any 
material  that  might  furnish  them  a  starting-point  for  their 
malpractices.  But  among  the  Bukaua  and  their  congeners 
witchcraft,  however  important,  is  only  one  special  mani¬ 
festation  of  a  more  general  system  of  ideas,  the  faith  in 
magic;  and  this  system  is  founded  on  a  triple  conception, — 
the  notion  that  desired  ends  can  be  attained  by  vicarious 
action  at  a  distance,  the  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  a  prescribed 
though  irrelevant  conduct,  and  a  dependence  on  the  super¬ 
natural  potency  of  certain  traditional  formulas.  How  these 
ideas  are  interlaced  in  the  operations  of  daily  life  can  easily 
be  illustrated  by  a  variety  of  examples. 

A  number  of  magicians  specialize  in  regulating  the 
weather.  Theirs  is  a  lucrative  profession,  for  people  are 
eager  to  bribe  a  wizard  into  stopping  excessive  rainfall  or 
ending  a  season  of  drought.  His  stock-in-trade  consists 
essentially  of  two  coconut  cups  and  a  great  multitude  of 
little  stones;  from  two  species  of  vine  growing  in  the  depths 
of  the  forest  he  squeezes  enough  sap  to  make  a  cup  half 
full,  then  stone  after  stone  is  thrown  into  it  till  the  fluid 

54 


BUKAUA  RELIGION 


55 


overflows  its  container:  the  more  it  overflows,  the  greater 
will  be  the  precipitation.  Thunder  is  produced  by  shaking 
the  stones  together  with  fragments  of  the  tough  skull  of 
a  certain  fish  in  one  of  the  cups,  after  which  a  hollow  sound 
is  made  by  striking  a  palm  trunk,  while  lightning  is  simu¬ 
lated  by  tearing  a  strip  of  pandanus  leaf.  The  two  vessels 
are  covered  and  left  in  the  woods.  If  the  wizard  is  hired 
to  make  the  rain  cease,  he  fetches  his  cups  and  dries  them 
on  a  stage  over  his  camp-fire. 

So  far  there  is  the  characteristic  belief  in  “imitative 
magic,”  i.  e.,  the  belief  that  a  desired  effect  can  be  produced 
by  the  simple  device  of  imitating  it  under  convenient  con¬ 
ditions:  as  the  sap  overflows  the  vessel,  so  the  longed-for 
rain  will  flow  from  the  firmament ;  as  the  contents  evaporate, 
so  the  moisture  will  disappear  from  the  atmosphere.  But 
this  is  far  from  being  the  whole  story.  Over  his  cups  the 
wizard  must  mutter  a  magic  formula : 

The  cuttle-fish  was  devoured  by  the  f  shark,  whose  inside 
turned  quite  black.  The  hen  and  the  cassowary  were  traveling 
in  a  boat,  but  the  cassowary,  angered  because  people  despised 
him,  destroyed  the  boat.  The  hen  flew  into  a  village,  which  was 
called  “Hen,”  and  a  giant  tortoise  carried  the  cassowary  to 
Buso ;  when  it  got  to  the  big  grassy  plain  of  Bahom,  the  casso¬ 
wary  turned  into  a  rock,  which  is  still  standing  there. 

Obviously  this  pointless  tale  bears  no  clear  relation  to 
the  magician’s  purpose,  and  the  same  irrelevancy  appears 
in  the  conduct  prescribed  for  him :  until  the  rain  falls  he 
must  refrain  from  work  and  betel-chewing;  on  the  other 
hand,  he  is  obliged  to  rub  his  hair  with  black  earth,  dotting 
his  forehead  and  nose,  and  must  take  a  daily  bath  in  the 
sea  at  dawn  while  extending  his  hands  over  the  water  and 
calling  the  rain.  It  is  by  fulfilling  the  triple  set  of  condi- 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


56 

tions, — by  using  imitative  magical  practices,  by  reciting  a 
mystic  form  of  words,  and  by  following  a  ritual  mode  of 
conduct, — that  the  wizard  makes  sure  of  gaining  his  ends. 

A  similar  combination  of  observances  precedes  and  ac¬ 
companies  the  holding  of  a  pig  market.  Swine  form  the 
most  highly  esteemed  article  of  property,  and  their  public 
sale  is  linked  with  a  good  deal  of  solemnity.  The  inaugu- 
rators  of  the  celebration  provide  a  large  number  of  well- 
fattened  pigs  and  invite  prospective  buyers,  who  feel  hon¬ 
ored  by  the  summons.  In  order  to  guarantee  high  prices 
and  a  peaceful  gathering  and  to  avert  the  premature  death 
of  the  pigs  selected  for  the  market,  the  owners  resort  to 
magical  practices  of  a  somewhat  involved  character.  A 
series  of  little  stones  represent  the  pigs’  vital  organs;  others, 
varying  in  color,  designate  correspondingly  colored  pigs. 
The  sellers  or  their  agents  must  submit  to  a  rigid  diet,  all 
food  except  roasted  taro  being  tabooed.  In  a  double  bowl 
filled  with  water  are  kept  a  snake  and  a  fish,  and  on  their 
safety,  insured  by  the  celebrants’  fast,  depends  that  of  the 
pigs.  The  vital  force  of  snake  and  fish  are  communicated 
to  the  stones  representing  the  pigs’  organs  and  are  in  turn 
fostered  by  the  presence  of  herbs  credited  with  high  nutri¬ 
tive  value.  Less  transparent  is  the  practice  of  setting  up 
a  stone  idol  between  two  clay  representations  of  boars’  tusks 
for  the  purpose  of  luring  buyers  who  own  valuables  worth 
acquiring  in  trade,  or  the  clandestine  blowing  of  little  shells 
to  make  the  guests  amass  plenty  of  these  desirable  media 
of  exchange.  On  the  other  hand,  for  the  preservation  of 
law  and  order  the  procedure  is  again  based  on  an  intelligi¬ 
ble  enough  association  of  ideas:  a  bit  of  root  is  burnt  and 
the  ashes  are  secretly  sprinkled  over  the  site  of  the  gather¬ 
ing,  so  that  they  may  impart  their  coolness  to  the  foot  of 
a  buyer  who  should  be  fired  with  anger.  The  charm  recited 


BUKAUA  RELIGION  57 

on  this  occasion  over  the  double  bowl  is  somewhat  less 
cryptic  in  its  application  than  the  one  cited  above : 

A  man  and  his  cousin,  named  Gasi  and  Anu,  wished  to  hold  a 
pig  market;  they  conferred  about  the  swine  and  fattened  the 
young  pigs  until  they  were  big  in  order  to  prepare  for  a  feast. 
Before  that  they  cooked  several  little  pigs  and  ate  them;  then 
the  man  himself  turned  into  a  pig  and  made  a  litter.  His  cousin 
went,  constantly  looking  for  him  and  saying,  “Cousin,  what  are 
you  doing?”  He  answered:  “Go,  look  for  our  wives  and  bid 
them  come  to  fetch  the  little  pig.”  They  carried  it  away,  kept 
it  till  it  was  big  enough  and  gave  birth  to  plenty  of  pigs,  so 
there  were  a  great  many.  Then  he  said,  “Cousin,  let  us  not 
wait  any  longer,  but  hasten  to  arrange  a  pig  market  after  two 
rainy  seasons.”  They  acted  accordingly.  There  were  a  great 
many  pigs.  They  made  a  new  clearing  and  entertained  each 
other,  and  the  people  brought  boars’  tusks  and  swine  there. 

In  short,  the  pig-seller  uses  the  same  pattern  as  the  rain¬ 
maker, — vicarious  magical  procedure,  ritualistic  abstinence, 
and  a  mystic  spell. 

This  pattern  is  equally  discernible  in  the  machinations  of 
the  death-dealing  sorcerer,  which  combine  the  processes  of 
imitative  with  those  of  “contagious”  magic,  that  is,  center 
in  the  bewitching  of  some  object  once  intimately  connected 
with  the  enemy.  The  profession  is  usually  followed  by 
puny,  deformed  men,  who  inherit  the  technique  from  their 
fathers  but  only  begin  practice  after  a  period  of  apprentice¬ 
ship  and  a  trial  of  their  competence.  A  wizard  is  powerless 
unless  he  can  secure  some  object,  however  small,  that  has 
been  in  contact  with  his  enemy;  a  remnant  of  his  victim’s 
meal,  the  spittle  he  has  expectorated  in  coughing,  the  paint 
he  has  used  to  daub  his  hair,  will  suffice,  and  to  obtain 
any  one  of  these  stealth  and  trickery  are  employed.  But 
the  price  of  success  is  once  more  a  prescribed  form  of  con- 


58  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

duct,  both  positive  and  negative:  the  magician  must  not 
bathe  nor  drink  anything  except  coconut  juice  nor  eat  any 
but  roasted  dishes ;  and  he  is  obliged  to  consume  what  others 
shun, — certain  species  of  onions,  some  bitter  fruits,  a  slightly 
poisonous  plant.  The  fragment  secured  is  wrapped  up  in 
leaves,  tied  together,  and  suspended  in  the  depths  of  the 
forest.  It  is  the  victim’s  soul  itself  that  is  thus  bound  by 
proxy,  and  its  owner  must  inevitably  fall  sick.  As  soon  as 
the  disease  takes  a  serious  turn,  the  patient’s  kin  determine 
the  sorcerer’s  identity  and  pay  him  to  desist  from  his  pur¬ 
pose.  If  he  has  not  been  hired  by  persons  of  greater  con¬ 
sequence  and  regards  the  fee  as  adequate,  he  will  readily 
grant  the  request,  breathe  on  some  leaves,  murmur  a  spell 
over  them  and  send  them  to  the  sick  man,  while  he  himself 
will  go  into  the  woods  and  nullify  his  previous  acts  by 
putting  the  package  into  water.  This  leads  to  the  patient’s 
recovery.  Should  he  remain  ill,  the  fault  is  laid  to  the 
charge  of  another  sorcerer  or,  if  his  conciliation  likewise 
fails  to  produce  results,  to  that  of  evil  spirits.  But  the 
magician  may  refuse  the  gifts  offered,  retire  to  the  forest, 
and  there  put  his  package  into  glowing  ashes  while  mutter¬ 
ing  his  spell:  “As  the  fire  slowly  consumes  this  package, 
so  shall  disease  destroy  the  sick  man.  Then  the  patient 
must  die,  but  his  death  will  be  avenged  by  his  relatives 
unless  the  crafty  wizard  seeks  safety  in  flight. 

The  examples  cited  sufficiently  indicate  the  nature  of 
Bukaua  magic.  Its  specific  object  naturally  varies,  em¬ 
bracing  in  fact  almost  the  whole  range  of  native  activities. 
Magic  is  used  to  insure  a  haul  of  fish,  to  acquire  the  min¬ 
strel’s  art,  to  fascinate  women,  to  cause  a  famine.  In  vir¬ 
tually  every  instance  the  recital  of  a  formula  either  a 
prayer  addressed  to  the  ancestral  spirits  or  a  snatch  of  a 
tale  as  in  the  quoted  spells — is  linked  with  a  certain  mode 


BUKAUA  RELIGION  59 

of  procedure;  and  in  the  cases  most  fully  reported  the 
practitioner  is  under  obligation  to  observe  certain  taboos 
and  some  positive  fixed  form  of  conduct. 

Souls  and  Spirits 

According  to  Bukaua  psychology,  the  soul  ( katu )  leaves 
the  body  to  lead  an  independent  existence  during  sleep,  and 
the  same  applies  to  fainting-spells ;  when  a  person  awakes 
from  sleep  or  swoon,  his  soul  has  come  back.  Death,  too, 
liberates  the  soul,  which  becomes  a  spirit  ( balum  or  ngalau) 
capable  of  assuming  any  shape  and  most  frequently  tending 
to  malevolence.  The  souls  of  the  deceased  reside  in  the 
underworld,  whose  entrance  lies  towards  the  east.  Very 
little  attention  is  paid  to  their  mode  of  life  there,  which  in 
general  is  pictured  as  similar  to  existence  in  this  world.  The 
kindred  Jabim  display  a  like  indifference  but  are  slightly 
more  explicit:  they  represent  the  ghosts  as  haunting  the 
woods  at  night  but  retiring  at  dawn.  Neither  tribe  has 
the  slightest  conception  of  other-worldly  reward  and  pun¬ 
ishment. 

Although  Herr  Lehner,  our  authority,  sometimes  seems 
to  imply  that  all  spirits  are  derived  from  the  souls  of 
the  deceased,  this  does  not  appear  from  his  concrete  descrip¬ 
tion  of  the  host  of  balum  beings.  It  is  true  that  certain 
bodily  afflictions  are  traced  to  the  action  of  spirits  wishing 
to  avenge  their  neglect  by  the  living,  or  to  inflict  penalties 
for  a  breach  of  tribal  custom.  But  when  in  the  enumera¬ 
tion  of  spiritual  beings  the  local  and  village  spirits  are 
singled  out  as  the  ancestors  of  the  villagers,  the  question 
naturally  arises  whether  the  others  should  not  be  conceived 
as  beings  dissociated  from  the  idea  of  ever  having  tenanted 
a  human  body. 


6o  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

However  this  may  be,  a  variety  of  supernatural  persons 
are  believed  to  affect  the  life  of  the  natives,  and  so  far 
from  being  confined  to  the  above-mentioned  resting-place 
in  the  underworld  they  haunt  beach  and  stream,  wood  and 
village.  The  village  spirits,  who  are  to  be  regarded  as  pre¬ 
eminently  the  ancestral  ghosts,  are  invoked  in  the  pig-hunt, 
in  tillage,  and  on  special  occasions;  they  receive  offerings 
either  as  a  bribe  to  induce  favorable  action  or  as  a  thanks¬ 
giving  for  past  services.  It  would  be  perilous  to  excite  their 
wrath  by  disrespectful  behavior.  Deference  is  also  shown 
to  the  field  spirits,  who  may  grant  plentiful  crops.  They 
are  wont  to  sit  on  the  stumps  of  trees  as  sentries  warding 
off  danger  to  the  plantation.  If  the  fruits  near  such  a 
stump  grow  to  exceptional  size,  this  proves  the  presence 
of  the  spirit,  and  no  one  may  make  a  noise  in  the  vicinity, 
let  alone  chop  wood  from  the  trunk  of  the  tree. 

With  these  potentially  benign  figures  may  be  contrasted 
a  series  of  wholly  or  predominantly  malevolent  ones.  Bumo 
infests  the  bushes  along  the  beach  and  attacks  innocent 
passers-by,  who  are  seized  with  fainting-spells  on  their  re¬ 
turn  to  the  village.  Balum-buauwi  haunts  the  sinister-look¬ 
ing  recesses  of  streams;  her  specialty  is  to  blight  little 
children  carried  across  the  creek  by  their  mothers,  for  she 
infects  them  with  the  wrinkled  appearance  of  her  own 
countenance.  Mothers  crossing  streams  at  uncanny-looking 
fords  can  only  safeguard  their  infants  by  murmuring  a 
spell  over  some  rocks  and  then  throwing  the  stones  towards 
both  mouth  and  source  of  the  watercourse.  Many  a  Bukaua 
seriously  asserts  that  he  has  seen  this  ill-favored  spirit  and 
heard  her  song.  Again  in  the  primeval  forest  there  dwell 
innumerable  trolls,  whose  voices  are  recognized  in  the  chirp¬ 
ing  of  wood  insects.  They  play  all  manner  of  tricks  on 
people,  causing  dogs  to  stray  from  the  right  track,  making 


BUKAUA  RELIGION  61 

wild  pigs  ferocious,  or  assuming  the  shape  of  snakes  to 
commit  depredations  in  human  dwellings.  They — especially 
one  of  their  number  named  Molo — are  inclined  to  make 
men  mad  or  epileptic. 

Besides  the  definitely  localized  beings  there  are  the  vagrant 
demons,  most  prominently  represented  by  the  love  spirits 
( wasu ).  All  the  love  charms  now  in  vogue  are  derived 
from  a  single  being  of  this  category,  whose  story  is  told 
as  follows.  Once  upon  a  time  a  native  seeking  shelter 
from  a  shower  discovered  the  spirit  sitting  in  the  foliage 
of  a  big  tree.  He  reported  what  he  had  seen  and  all  the 
villagers  hastened  to  behold  the  wasu.  The  women  became 
inflamed  with  passion  and  forgot  their  conjugal  duties  in 
their  infatuation  with  the  spirit.  Their  husbands,  incensed 
at  such  conduct,  cut  down  the  tree  and  killed  the  seducer, 
who  bore  the  form  of  a  child,  was  beautifully  decorated, 
and  had  a  sweet-smelling  body.  One  of  two  netted  bags 
in  his  possession  was  found  to  contain  every  kind  of  love 
charm,  and  since  this  event  these  charms  have  been  used 
by  men  in  abducting  women.  Another  member  of  this 
mysterious  group  seeks  intercourse  with  men  and  women, 
the  result  being  sickness  and  death. 

Owing  to  the  obscurity  that  envelops  the  relations  of  the 
ancestral  spirits  to  those  of  other  categories  among  the 
Bukaua,  it  may  be  well  to  cite  some  data  from  the  neigh¬ 
boring  Tami  Islanders  as  possibly  shedding  additional  light 
on  the  beliefs  of  their  fellow-Melanesians. 

The  Tami  rather  clearly  distinguish  the  spirits  of  the 
departed  from  supernatural  beings  of  other  categories.  The 
latter  are  numerous  and  of  varied  character.  There  are  local 
spirits,  many  of  them  double-faced,  haunting  ravine  and 
mountain  top,  secluded  rocks,  and  giant  trees.  Only  the 
natives  of  neighboring  villages  may  approach  such  spots 


62  primitive  religion 

with  impunity;  all  others  are  liable  to  suffer  punishment, 
whether  in  the  form  of  sickness  or  some  mishap  in  travel¬ 
ing.  This  type  figures  prominently  in  legendary  lore.  One 
representative,  Tumangon,  for  example,  lures  children  to 
accompany  him  on  a  voyage  and  plans  to  desert  them  on 
a  lonely  islet,  but  by  shrewdly  playing  on  his  gluttony  they 
succeed  in  foiling  and  destroying  the  monster.  Yet  the 
story  of  an  almost  namesake  of  this  ogre’s,  Tumangon 
Sumosum,  proves  that  this  class  of  beings  is  not  conceive 
as  wholly  malevolent.  Rebuffed  by  village  after  village 
when  he  approaches  in  the  guise  of  a  skeleton,  the  spirit 
gratefully  rewards  a  hospitable  old  man  with  a  bountifu 
supply  of  valuable  dogs’  teeth.  Logically  the  love-spirits 
would  seem  to  fall  into  the  same  class  of  local  spirits  as 
the  foregoing,  for  they,  too,  haunt  definite  spots,  such  as 
groves  and  springs ;  but  in  the  aboriginal  scheme  they  con¬ 
stitute  a  separate  group  characterized  by  their  power  to 
seduce  young  maidens  with  magic  songs  or  redolent  splinters 
of  wood.  Their  essence  is  of  finer  stuff  than  mortal  flesh, 
and  when  a  young  woman  in  her  ardor  seizes  a  spirit  before 
he  has  had  time  to  “materialize”  she  crushes  him,  thoug 
ultimately  he  may  be  restored  from  a  drop  of  his  blood.  A 
third  variety  of  spirit  is  called  ding.  Its  representatives 
are  body-snatchers  and  have  the  power  of  assuming  the 
shape  of  a  dog  or  of  one  of  the  mourners  of  a  deceased 
native.  They  appear  in  folk-literature  as  stupid  trolls  who 
are  always  hoodwinked  by  their  human  adversaries. 

Still  another  series  of  supernatural  beings  are  dignified 
by  our  authority  with  the  title  of  ‘  deities.  These  include 
the  race  of  buwnn,  who  inhabit  an  otherwise  untenanted 
island  and  are  represented  on  house  planks  as  having  fish¬ 
like  bodies  and  human  heads.  Normally  invisible,  they 
assume  human  form  in  order  to  seduce  women,  who  in- 


BUKAUA  RELIGION  63 

variably  die  as  a  result  of  their  adulterous  intercourse  with 
the  spirits.  Even  in  quite  recent  times  inexplicable  deaths 
of  women  have  been  explained  as  due  to  such  experiences. 
Indeed,  the  buwun  are  generally  a  dangerous  lot,  causing 
earthquakes  and  epidemics.  Nevertheless,  there  is  little 
attempt  to  placate  them :  only  when  the  ravages  of  disease 
are  especially  terrifying  they  receive  the  offering  of  an 
emaciated  pig  or  a  mangy  cur. 

Strangely  enough,  there  is  no  consensus  of  opinion  as 
to  whether  Anuto,  the  generally  recognized  creator,  belongs 
to  the  buwun.  Some  figure  him  as  occupying  a  fair  island, 
others  picture  him  sitting  on  a  subterranean  cliff,  where  a 
turning  of  his  body  produces  an  earthquake;  then  again  he 
is  described  as  seated  on  the  earth  and  supporting  the  sky 
with  his  head.  At  all  events,  he  is  definitely  the  creator 
of  the  world  and  of  the  first  human  couple.  His  is  the 
first  portion  of  food  at  public  banquets  and  markets,'  and 
the  presentation  of  this  offering  constitutes  the  whole  of 
his  cult;  nor  can  it  be  regarded  as  involving  much  of  a 
sacrifice  since  aboriginal  theory  has  it  that  only  the  soul 
of  the  food  is  partaken  by  the  gods  while  its  material 
essence  may  be  consumed  by  their  votaries.  Sometimes 
Old  Panku,  instead  of  Anuto,  is  represented  as  the  creator 
and  earthquake-producer.  Apparently  the  inconsistencies 
in  Tami  cosmology  are  in  part  due  to  the  existence  of 
distinct  family  traditions,  which  in  the  absence  of  a  theo¬ 
logically-minded  caste  have  not  been  welded  into  unison. 

But  all  of  the  aforementioned  beings  are  of  relatively 
subordinate  importance  as  compared  with  the  ancestral 
spirits  or,  to  be  more  accurate,  the  spirits  of  those  forbears 
personally  known  to  the  descendants.  They  dwell  in  the 
underworld,  where  everything  is  finer  than  on  this  earth, 
amidst  such  abundance  of  fruit  that  life  is  far  easier  than 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


64 

here.  Yet  it  is  but  a  continuation  of  earthly  existence: 
men  work  and  marry,  fall  sick  and  die,  when  they  are 
transformed  into  worms  or  white  ants ;  or  as  some  contend, 
into  goblins  of  the  woods  who  damage  the  natives,  crops. 
The  spirits  are  far  from  hospitable  to  arriving  souls.  A 
favorite  practical  joke  of  theirs  consists  in  sending  the 
novices  up  trees,  then  suddenly  seizing  them  by  their  feet 
and  jerking  them  down  so  that  the  rough  bark  cuts  open 
all  their  bodies.  To  prevent  such  scurvy  treatment  the 
kin  of  the  deceased  present  them  with  gifts,  the  souls  of 
which  are  designed  to  placate  their  hosts  of  the  spirit  world. 

The  dead  are  not  confined  to  their  subterranean  abode 
but  are  able  to  reappear  at  any  time.  This  happens  most 
commonly  when  one  of  their  relatives  approaches  death; 
then  they  assemble  to  conduct  him  to  his  prospective  home. 
However,  this  conception  is  not  universal,  and  at  times  the 
departing  soul  is  exhorted  not  to  go  astray.  But  though 
the  dead  may  return  to  this  world,  they  do  not  linger  here, 
because  it  is  too  cold  for  them.  Some  families  make  a 
practice  of  summoning  the  spirits  of  recently  departed  kins¬ 
men,  which  appear  in  the  shape  of  snakes  and  may  be 
consulted  as  oracles  by  those  conversant  with  their  lan¬ 
guage,  which  consists  of  whistling  sounds.  Such  perform¬ 
ances  take  place  only  at  night  and  are  conducted  mainly 
by  women. 

It  is  not  superfluous  to  add  that  the  seances  are  wholly 
devoid  of  any  material  advantage  for  the  managers,  and 
the  same  holds  for  the  complementary  enterprise  of  visiting 
the  spirit  land.  Here,  too,  women  play  the  most  important 
part  and  transmit  their  powers — that  is,  their  magic  spells 
— to  their  daughters.  If  any  one  desires  information 
from  a  dead  relative,  he  provides  the  seer  with  some  article 
used  by  the  person  in  question,  upon  which  she  lies  down 


BUKAUA  RELIGION 


65 

after  rubbing  her  forehead  with  ginger  and  murmuring  her 
magic  formula.  Then  her  soul  descends  to  the  spirits  and 
secures  the  required  revelation  from  her  deceased  kin.  The 
fame  acquired  by  the  performance  is  her  sole  reward. 

The  importance  of  magic  that  appears  in  the  last-cited 
performance  is  equally  manifest  in  the  treatment  of  disease. 
There  is  one  formula  against  pains  in  the  chest,  another 
against  catarrh,  a  third  against  rheumatism.  Spirits,  who 
might  snatch  away  the  souls  of  first-born  infants,  are  ban¬ 
ished  by  the  singing  of  special  songs.  In  general,  there 
is  a  magical  rite  for  restoring  a  patient’s  soul  when  pur¬ 
loined  by  ghosts.  The  performer,  reciting  his  spells,  chews 
ginger  or  the  bark  of  a  certain  tree,  places  these  substances 
into  a  shell,  and  blows  this  as  an  instrument.  The  blast 
recalls  the  soul,  while  the  odor  of  the  ingredients  drives 
away  the  spirits. 

In  this  connection  it  remains  to  explain  some  interesting 
points  of  Tami  psychological  theory.  The  natives  recognize 
two  souls,  a  “long”  and  a  “short”  one,  both  occupying  the 
abdomen.  The  long  soul  leaves  the  body  during  sleep  and 
also  permanently  just  before  death,  when  it  announces  the 
impending  event  to  relatives  who  happen  to  reside  else¬ 
where;  finally  it  migrates  by  way  of  western  New  Britain 
to  a  village  on  the  north  coast.  It  is  this  long  soul  that 
is  stolen  by  malevolent  ghosts  and  has  to  be  restored  to  the 
body.  On  the  other  hand,  the  “short”  soul  only  departs 
after  death  and  even  then  lingers  about  the  corpse  before 
going  to  the  underworld,  from  where  it  returns  to  molest 
the  sorcerer  who  caused  its  departure  and  to  see  that  his 
deed  is  avenged  by  the  victim’s  kin. 


66 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


Ceremonialism 

The  outstanding  Bukaua  ceremonial  is  that  connected 
with  the  admission  of  boys  to  an  adult’s  privileges.  There 
is  indeed  a  parallel  puberty  rite  for  girls :  common  to  both 
performances  are  the  segregation  of  the  novices,  their  in¬ 
struction  by  elders,  the  observance  of  food  taboos  and  other 
restrictions,  and  the  formal  promotion  to  a  new  status. 
But  the  social  import  of  the  girls’  ceremony  is  relatively 
slight;  or,  rather,  its  significance  is  essentially  of  a  private 
character.  While  among  various  African  peoples  initiation 
means  entrance  into  an  organization  of  women  comparable 
to  the  men’s  society,  no  such  goal  is  attained  in  New 
Guinea :  the  young  maiden  is  merely  recognized  as  of  mar¬ 
riageable  age.  The  youths’  initiation,  on  the  other  hand,  leads 
to  what  may  be  called  full-fledged  citizenship,  from  which 
women  are  by  the  unwritten  tribal  law  forever  barred. 

This  basic  distinction  in  favor  of  the  male  sex  is  prom¬ 
inent  throughout  the  great  festival.  Women  are  mystified 
and  terrorized  so  long  as  it  lasts.  A  hoax  is  propounded 
for  their  exclusive  consumption.  The  Balum,  they  are  told, 
is  a  voracious  demon  hungering  for  their  sons,  but  willing 
to  disgorge  them  at  the  price  of  a  fat  pig  a  head.  It  is  also 
well  to  flatten  his  gullet  with  taro  and  other  vegetable  food. 
Thus  it  becomes  the  mothers’  duty  to  fatten  pigs  and  amass 
provisions  for  a  solemnity  they  are  never  allowed  to  wit¬ 
ness.  Circumcision  forms  an  indispensable  part  of  initia¬ 
tion,  and  to  account  for  the  wound  the  women  are  informed 
that  the  monster  has  bitten  or  scratched  his  victims  in  spew¬ 
ing  them  forth  again.  Under  the  primitive  conditions  of 
performing  the  operation  it  naturally  proves  fatal  at  times, 
and  in  that  event  the  unfortunate  mother  is  told  that  her 
ransom  was  rejected  by  the  ogre  as  inadequate,  or  that 


BUKAUA  RELIGiON 


67 

the  boy  failed  to  conform  to  the  regulations.  No  wonder 
the  terrified  women  display  great  zeal  in  raising  pigs  and 
part  from  their  sons  in  a  state  of  tremendous  excitement. 
In  order  to  keep  the  secret  from  the  female  sex  the  newly 
initiated  are  warned  on  pain  of  horrible  penalties  never  to 
divulge  the  real  nature  of  the  festivities,  while  the  women 
must  leave  the  village  when  the  ceremonial  structure  has 
been  built,  for  they,  too,  would  fall  prey  to  the  insatiable 
monster  if  he  caught  sight  of  them.  To  lend  verisimilitude 
to  the  strange  tale,  the  men  simulate  the  spirit’s  voice  by 
musical  instruments,  especially  by  the  swinging  of  the  leaf¬ 
shaped  wooden  slabs  known  as  bull-roarers.  Only  two  or 
three  aged  women,  in  some  unexplained  manner,  are  cog¬ 
nizant  of  what  really  takes  place,  and  these  are  bribed  into 
silence  by  surreptitious  gifts  of  pork. 

While  the  festival  is  thus  a  severe  test  of  the  women’s 
nerves,  it  is  naturally  an  at  least  equally  grave  ordeal  for 
the  tyros  themselves.  After  the  heart-rending  separation 
from  their  mothers  they  are  led  blindfolded  to  the  cere¬ 
monial  building  that  is  to  form  their  abode  for  from  three 
to  five  months.  There  two  hidden  sentries  guard  them, 
terrifying  the  boys  with  strange  noises  and  menacing  the 
over-bold  with  a  sharp  adze.  Novices  and  guardians  alike 
must  practice  continence  and  abstain  from  pork,  lizards, 
mice,  and  fresh  water.  Otherwise  the  pigs  and  the  novices 
might  both  die.  Except  for  the  plaiting  of  mats  and  the 
manufacture  of  flutes,  the  young  men  do  absolutely  no 
work  during  the  period  of  seclusion,  nor  are  they  permitted 
to  bathe  until  the  morning  of  the  operation.  Just  before 
the  circumcision  itself  the  elders  frighten  the  boys  by  every 
manner  of  noise, — the  swinging  of  dozens  of  booming  bull- 
roarers,  the  clamor  of  hundreds  of  human  voices,  the  weird 
rattling  of  shells  and  stones  suspended  from  the  tops  of 


68 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


trees.  The  novices’  anxiety  is  not  lessened  when  their 
hands  are  tied  behind  their  backs  and  they  are  carried 
or  led  blindfolded  to  the  site  of  the  operation,  where  sham 
attacks  are  made  on  them  and  their  guides ;  nor  is  circum¬ 
cision  with  a  splint  of  obsidian  an  unalloyed  pleasure.  Cries 
of  pain,  however,  are  muffled  by  boars’  tusks  tied  in  front 
of  the  victims’  mouths,  and  drowned  by  the  elders’  thun¬ 
derous  music.  After  a  bath  the  boys  return  to  the  cere¬ 
monial  house  and  may  join  in  a  vast  feast.  Any  surplus 
food  must  be  buried  lest  the  women  grow  skeptical  as 
to  the  Balum’s  voracity.  This  day’s  proceedings  form  the 
climax  of  the  festival  and  alien  visitors  depart  forthwith. 
There  follows  a  two  or  three  months’  period  of  convales¬ 
cence,  at  the  close  of  which  the  novices,  now  conversant 
with  the  true  state  of  affairs,  are  once  more  pledged  to 
secrecy  and  receive  sage  advice  as  to  ethical  conduct.  Gayly 
bedecked  with  ornaments,  their  faces  daubed  with  paint, 
finely  carved  combs  stuck  in  their  hair,  the  boys  return  to 
the  society  of  their  mothers  and  the  village  at  large,  greeted 
by  a  merry  and  vociferous  throng;  and  with  a  final  banquet 
the  ceremony  as  a  whole  comes  to  a  close. 

So  far,  then,  the  Balum  festival  appears  as  a  means  of 
exploiting  the  women  and  of  admitting  youths  to  the  grade 
of  adult  manhood  after  a  severe  test.  But  this  by  no 
means  exhausts  the  content  of  this  composite  cultural  phe¬ 
nomenon.  The  occasion  has  political  and  economic  sig¬ 
nificance.  It  unites,  at  intervals  of  from  ten  to  eighteen 
years,  not  only  the  Bukaua  and  the  kindred  Jabim,  but  also 
the  Tami  Islanders  and  the  wholly  unrelated  Kai  of  Papuan 
speech.  Since  all  feuds  are  suspended  during  the  course 
of  the  ritual,  intertribal  amity  is  promoted,  and  its  basis, 
as  so  often  happens,  lies  in  the  trade  relations  involved, 
for  the  foreign  guests  are  invited  on  the  assumption  that 


BUKAUA  RELIGION 


69 

they  are  eager  to  buy  pigs.  In  other  words,  the  perform¬ 
ance  by  which  boys  become  full-fledged  members  of  their 
own  community  is  linked  with  the  quite  unrelated  idea  of 
a  pig  market.  Logically  enough,  the  taboos  imposed  on 
the  novices  are  interpreted  to  safeguard  not  only  their  in¬ 
terests,  but  the  health  of  the  pigs  destined  for  sale. 

The  Balum  proceedings  evidently  loom  as  awe-inspiring 
mysteries  in  the  minds  of  the  women  and  uninitiated  males. 
What,  however,  is  their  religious  significance  for  the  in¬ 
siders,  the  adult  men  who  conduct  the  performances?  This 
inevitable  query  is  not  easily  answered.  It  is  tempting  to 
deny  the  religious  feature  altogether  and  to  cite  in  support 
the  conscious  deception  of  the  women  for  the  benefit  of 
the  men.  Now  of  course  so  much  is  clear,  that  the  per¬ 
formers  cannot .  have  any  faith  in  the  cock-and-bull  story 
told  for  feminine  consumption.  But  from  this  it  does 
not  follow  that  they  have  no  faith  in  some  mysterious  be¬ 
ing  associated  with  the  ritual,  still  less  that  the  ritual  itself 
is  wanting  in  sacredness  from  their  point  of  view.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  occasional  utterances  by  the  natives  leave 
little  doubt  on  the  subject.  One  informant  conceives  the 
Balum  as  the  incarnation  of  spirits  of  long-deceased  men, 
who  on  reappearing  demand  a  pig;  another  describes  him 
as  the  ancestor  of  a  group  of  villagers  or  pictures  a  weird, 
vague  personality  responsible  for  landslides  and  other  catas¬ 
trophic  events.  Moreover,  the  bull-roarers  are  far  more 
than  a  mere  means  for  the  intimidation  of  women.  Each 
bears  the  name  of  a  departed  villager,  to  which  is  added 
the  honorific  epithet  “the  old”  in  the  case  of  those  repre¬ 
senting  distinguished  men  of  the  past.  In  these  latter  cases 
individual  peculiarities  are  indicated;  for  example,  two  lat¬ 
eral  humps  are  a  reminder  of  Gumba’s  protruding  hip¬ 
bones,  and  an  obliquely  hung  instrument  perpetuates  the 


70  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

memory  of  Wabo’s  disfigured  nose.  These  major  or  “rul¬ 
ing”  bull-roarers  enjoy  special  veneration,  are  carefully 
guarded  by  the  master  of  the  initiation  ceremonies,  and  sup¬ 
ply  the  villagers  with  a  rallying-cry  and  shibboleth.  Some 
of  the  decorative  engravings  are  definitely  symbolic  of  the 
spirit  presiding  over  the  festival.  A  design  interpreted  as 
a  scorpion  or  millipede  is  intended  to  suggest  that  the  Balum, 
like  them,  can  cause  sudden  poison  by  his  bite,  and  will  do 
so  if  his  injunctions  are  set  at  naught.  On  another  bull- 
roarer  a  ghost  is  shown  carrying  aloft  a  firebrand  and  thus 
exposing  the  culprit  who  has  dared  divulge  the  secret  of 
the  Balum.  While  these  decorations  may  be  charged  in 
part  to  the  gratification  of  esthetic  impulses  and  the  desire 
to  impress  the  newly  initiated,  their  elaborateness  betokens 
that  they  had  some  deeper  significance  for  the  elders  them¬ 
selves,  a  conclusion  in  harmony  with  the  appellations  and 
uses  of  the  articles  as  explained  above. 

But  from  our  broader  point  of  view  the  religious  char¬ 
acter  of  the  Balum  festival  is  not  dependent  on  the  elders’ 
belief  in  any  spiritual  patron,  as  may  be  demonstrated  by 
an  extreme  case.  The  bull-roarer  initiation  ritual  has  spread 
from  the  mainland  about  Huon  Gulf  to  Tami  and  other 
neighboring  islands  and  has  naturally  lost  some  of  its  holy 
associations  in  transmission.  Indeed,  if  we  can  trust  our 
missionary  authority,  the  Tami  elders  fail  to  associate  any 
conceptions  of  supernatural  beings  with  either  the  cere¬ 
mony  or  the  anthropomorphic  representations  connected 
with  it.  Nevertheless  we  are  told  that  the  bull-roarers  are 
treated  with  reverence,  and  that  the  initiation  proceedings 
are  marked  by  a  series  of  meticulously  observed  solemnities. 
Whether  these  have  for  their  primary  object  the  magical 
preservation  of  the  fattened  pigs,  as  Herr  Bamler  suggests, 
is  of  subordinate  interest.  The  main  point  is  that  even  in 


BUKAUA  RELIGION  71 

the  borrowed  and  apparently  weakened  form  characteristic 
of  these  islands,  the  festival  preserves  that  quality  of  holi¬ 
ness  or  supernaturalism  which  lifts  it  from  the  plane  of 
everyday  thought  to  what  may  properly  be  called  the  level 
of  the  religious  attitude. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  prior  to  contact  with  the 
Bukaua  there  was  a  total  absence  of  pretentious  ritual  in 
Tami.  First  of  all,  the  natives  practiced  the  Tago  cult; 
secondly,  there  was  an  elaborate  memorial  festival  that 
closed  the  two  or  three  years’  mourning  period  in  honor 
of  a  dead  kinsman.  The  Tago  or  mummers’  cult,  as  we 
may  call  it,  is  like  the  bull-roarer  festival  an  alien  feature, 
though  one  of  greater  antiquity  in  these  parts.  It  is  in 
fact  identical  with  the  Dukduk  of  New  Britain,  so  that 
Tami  ritualism  represents  the  confluence  of  two  cultural 
waves  resulting  to  a  certain  extent  in  duplication,  since  both 
cults  are  associated  with  ghosts  and  with  the  terrorization 
of  women  and  the  uninitiated  boys.  The  Tago  is  only  cele¬ 
brated  once  every  ten  or  twelve  years,  but  then  its  cere¬ 
monial  period  extends  over  approximately  a  twelvemonth 
and  throughout  its  duration  the  use  of  coconuts  is  strictly 
tabooed.  The  spirits  impersonated  by  the  masqueraders 
are  said  to  come  out  of  pits  in  the  ground  or  from  across 
the  sea.  They  receive  a  formal  welcome  with  a  sennet 
of  shell-horn  music  and  are  warmly  thanked  for  having 
braved  the  long  journey.  Every  morning  and  evening  one 
or  more  of  the  performers,  wearing  a  mask  and  heavy  cere¬ 
monial  garb,  proceed  through  the  village,  frightening  the 
uninitiated,  while  at  night  distinctive  dances  are  executed 
to  the  accompaniment  of  drums.  Each  family  owns  a 
mask  peculiar  to  its  members,  and  the  owner  satisfies  the 
hunger  of  the  man  performing  for  him.  At  the  close  of 
the  Tago  there  is  a  final  feast  and  dance,  the  performers 


72 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


bid  farewell  to  their  patrons  and  receive  provender  for  the 
journey,  as  well  as  minor  valuables;  then  they  disappear 
amidst  general  lamentation. 

The  memorial  festival  constitutes  another  grand  occa¬ 
sion  in  the  natives’  life.  All  the  villagers,  and  probably 
the  people  of  a  neighboring  community  as  well,  are  invited 
and  lavishly  entertained  with  pork  and  taro  porridge  in 
quantities  that  might  have  been  ample  for  a  ten  days’  nor¬ 
mal  diet.  Every  one  adorns  himself  in  special  fashion, — 
the  mourners  by  daubing  their  necks,  heads  and  chests  with 
black  earth.  With  nightfall  the  dance  commences  and  is 
continued  until  daylight,  when  the  food  is  distributed  and 
the  feast  begins.  The  spirits,  both  those  in  whose  honor 
the  ceremony  is  primarily  held  and  an  indefinite  number 
of  others,  partake  of  the  food  by  somehow  absorbing  its 
spiritual  essence.  Finally,  the  dancers  once  more  appear 
in  a  set  of  pantomimes  that  make  the  spectators  shake 
with  laughter.  Two  men  pretend  carrying  a  pig,  the  ani¬ 
mal  being  represented  by  a  piece  of  wood  tied  to  a  pole. 
Suddenly  they  are  confronted  by  a  thicket, — in  reality  two 
dancers, — and  the  man  in  front  makes  gestures  to  his 
partner,  explaining  the  nature  of  the  obstacle  which  is 
cleared  away  with  a  mock-ax.  One  of  the  carriers  sud¬ 
denly  runs  a  spine  into  his  foot,  which  his  comrade  attempts 
to  extract  with  a  stick  an  inch  in  thickness.  In  another 
farce  of  this  type  one  player  takes  the  part  of  a  pig,  while 
two  companions  are  the  old  women  supposed  to  feed  it. 
The  pig  grows  savage  and  charges  the  women,  who  ap¬ 
proach  the  trough  full  of  fear  but  are  driven  to  take  to  their 
heels.  In  still  other  cases  actors  carry  sand  in  perforated 
bags.  If  the  deceased  was  a  person  of  prominence,  an  of¬ 
fering  of  food  and  valuables  normally  terminates  the  per¬ 
formance,  though  some  add  a  further  act  of  devotion,  dis- 


BUKAUA  RELIGION 


73 


interring  the  bones  after  decomposition  in  order  to  daub 
them  with  red  paint,  and  after  keeping  them  in  the  house 
for  two  or  three  years  rebury  the  remains  for  good. 

Summary 

Bukaua  and  Tami  supernaturalism  stands  closer  to  that 
of  the  Ekoi  than  to  that  of  the  Crow :  sorcery  and  ghost- 
cults  are  prominently  associated  with  New  Guinea  notions 
of  extraordinary  power;  and  while  direct  personal  com¬ 
munion  with  the  supernatural  undoubtedly  occurs,  it  is  not 
the  recognized  and  generally  practiced  right  of  the  individ¬ 
ual  native  to  seek  it.  Ceremonially,  too,  the  mystery  of  the 
initiation  festival,  with  the  sacrificing  of  animals  and  the 
subordination  of  women,  savors  far  more  of  West  African 
ritualism  than  of  any  Plains  Indian  performances  even 
when  these  are  executed  by  a  restricted  membership.  That 
a  consistent  scheme  of  the  Extraordinary  moiety  of  the 
universe  is  lacking  in  all  three  tribes,  is  manifest;  but  it  is 
equally  clear  that  all  three  somehow  respond  to  the  Extra¬ 
ordinary  in  the  routine  of  existence.  What  differs  is  the 
technique  employed:  in  one  of  the  typical  crises  of  life  a 
Crow  throws  himself  upon  the  Supernatural  by  going  out 
for  a  vision ;  an  Ekoi  consults  a  diviner  and  prays  to  ghost 
or  njomm;  a  Bukaua  resorts  to  the  magician,  who  in  turn 
falls  back  upon  the  traditional  recipe. 

Let  us  note  again  that  catchwords  utterly  fail  to  penetrate 
to  the  ultimate  psychology  of  our  phenomena.  In  a  sense, 
both  the  Ekoi  and  the  New  Guinea  natives  are  “ancestor- 
worshipers. ^ ”  But  in  the  West  African  tribe  the  spirits  of  the 
dead  are  definitely  subordinated  to  the  two  major  gods  and 
coordinated  with  a  legion  of  njomm;  in  New  Guinea  there 
are  several  categories  of  supernatural  beings,  but  probably 


74 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


the  ghosts  alone  are  of  much  religious  significance.  More 
important  still,  these  personal  beings  cannot  only  be  sporad¬ 
ically  overcome  by  the  use  of  impersonal  magic,  as  hap¬ 
pens  among  the  Ekoi  likewise,  but  they  are  regularly  ig¬ 
nored  in  important  situations  of  life  in  favor  of  the  imita¬ 
tive  practices,  charms,  and  taboos  described.  “Ghosts”  in 
the  Kamerun  are  not  what  they  are  in  Huon  Gulf. 

Finally,  we  may  ask,  in  what  sense  some  of  the  spiritual 
beings  described  in  the  preceding  chapter  belong  to  the  realm 
of  religion  at  all.  The  ding,  for  example,  have  the  power  of 
shape-shifting.  But  does  that  bring  them  within  the  range 
of  the  Extraordinary,  let  alone  Holy,  when  they  are  regu¬ 
larly  outwitted  by  human  opponents?  The  caterpillar,  too, 
undergoes  a  metamorphosis  foreign  to  man,  yet  this  does 
not  raise  it  to  superhuman  status.  Let  us  prepare  for  the 
conclusion  that  non-human  personalities,  including  spirits, 
may  be  conceived  in  such  a  way  as  to  be  eliminated  from 
the  domain  of  the  Extraordinary.  It  is  the  psychological 
response  to  them  that  is  alone  decisive  in  the  matter. 

References 

1  This  sketch  is  based  on  Lehner  and  Bamler,  both  in  Neu- 
hauss. 


( 


CHAPTER  IV 


POLYNESIAN  RELIGION1 

In  spite  of  many  local  peculiarities  the  culture  of  Poly¬ 
nesia  presents  an  essentially  uniform  character.  Certain  of 
its  aspects,  however,  have  either  been  more  accurately  re¬ 
ported  in  some  of  the  islands  than  in  others,  or  were  de¬ 
veloped  with  unequal  degrees  of  clarity  in  distinct  sections 
of  the  area.  Hence,  instead  of  selecting  a  single  group  for 
intensive  treatment,  I  will  essay  a  synthetic  sketch  of  the 
whole  region,  though  most  of  the  illustrations  will  be  drawn 
from  Tonga,  Hawaii,  and  New  Zealand. 

A  comparison  of  the  Polynesian  religion  with  that  of  the 
tribes  hitherto  considered  will  once  more  illustrate  the  point 
that  cultures  are  not  so  much  set  off  from  one  another  by 
distinctive  traits  as  by  the  weighting  and  the  organization 
of  these  traits  into  a  distinctive  whole.  So  we  find  that  there 
are  features  common  to  the  Bukaua  and  the  Polynesians, — 
noticeably  the  combination  of  spells  and  sympathetic  magic 
for  purposes  of  sorcery.  Again,  these  South  Sea  Islanders, 
like  the  Ekoi,  rendered  homage  to  the  souls  of  departed  an¬ 
cestors.  Finally,  though  much  has  been  written  concerning 
the  supposedly  peculiar  mana  concept  of  the  Oceanians, 
when  we  ignore  irrelevant  philological  niceties  and  minor 
variations  in  local  usage  it  unmasks  as  nothing  but  a  very 
old  friend.  “Mana  was  shown  when  a  man  undertook  to  do 
an  unusual  and  almost  impossible  thing  and  yet  succeeded.” 
On  the  other  hand,  when  a  Maori  chief  was  captured  by 
the  enemy  he  had  evidently  lost  his  mana.  It  was  by  no 

75 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


76 

means  limited  to  personal  agents,  however.  Conceived  as 
somewhat  in  the  nature  of  a  transferable  fluid,  it  could  be 
conducted  into  weapons  by  placing  them  in  temples,  where 
they  might  absorb  the  potency  vested  in  the  gods.  Won¬ 
drous  tales  are  told  of  clubs  mysteriously  invisible  to  all  but 
their  rightful  owner  or  so  highly  charged  that  they  con¬ 
stantly  kept  moving,  and  of  a  quarterstaff  that  could  fore¬ 
tell  the  issue  of  a  battle.  Whether  mana  was  always  ulti¬ 
mately  a  gift  of  the  gods,  as  Mr.  Collocott  suggests,  is  not 
quite  clear.  It  is  certain  that  the  term  was  applied  both  to 
persons  and  things,  that  it  denotes  “miracle”  in  the  Tongan 
rendering  of  the  Bible,  that  it  might  designate  an  unusually 
protracted  spell  of  rain  no  less  than  a  mysterious  apparition. 
In  short,  there  is  nothing  unique  in  the  concept;  it  corre¬ 
sponds,  as  exactly  as  concepts  of  widely  separated  peoples 
can  ever  be  expected  to  do,  to  the  Crow  maxpe  and  the  Ekoi 
njomm.  The  peculiarity  of  Polynesian  religion  must  be 
sought  in  another  direction :  it  will  be  found,  among  other 
things,  in  the  interrelations  of  social  and  religious  motives. 

Religion  and  Society 

In  the  whole  range  of  human  history  no  people  probably 
ever  attached  greater  significance  to  distinctions  of  rank  than 
the  Polynesians.  There  was  first  of  all  a  division  of  all  so¬ 
ciety  into  the  nobility  and  the  common  herd ;  and  the  former 
were  subdivided  with  an  extraordinary  degree  of  subtlety. 
The  basic  dichotomy  rested  in  theory  on  the  divine  lineage 
of  the  aristocrats,  and  the  finer  gradations  of  status  de¬ 
pended  either  on  the  relative  loftiness  of  the  divine  ances¬ 
tors  or  on  the  directness  of  descent  from  a  common  ances¬ 
tor.  In  practice,  many  knotty  heraldic  problems  were  bound 
to  arise  when  the  dignity  oLotie  parental  line  had  to  be  bal- 


POLYNESIAN  RELIGION 


77 

anced  against  the  possibly  inferior  status  of  the  other  in 
settling  the  claims  of  rivals  for  precedence.  Primogeniture, 
such  as  prevailed  in  some  regions,  likewise  introduced  com¬ 
plications.  Since  all  but  the  eldest-born  suffered  a  degrada¬ 
tion  of  one  step  in  the  ladder,  it  inevitably  happened  that  the 
younger  children  of  the  lowest  title-bearer  sank  to  the  level 
of  plebeians.  Now,  in  Tonga,  for  instance,  the  theory  ob¬ 
tained  that  only  the  souls  of  nobles  survived  death;  thus,  by 
a  rigorous  application  of  this  notion,  the  soul  of  one  son  in 
the  family  would  live  on,  while  the  souls  of  his  brothers 
would  perish  with  the  body.  Some  of  them  might  well  balk 
at  this  interpretation  and  indulge  what  Mariner  quaintly  calls 
“the  vanity  to  think  they  have  immortal  souls  as  well  as  the 
matabooles  (lesser  nobles)  and  chiefs.’ ’  But  whatever  in¬ 
tricacies  might  be  presented  by  everyday  experience,  the  ideal 
principle  underlying  the  whole  scheme  was  transparent : 
status  was  correlated  with  purity  of  lineage. 

This  conception  appears  perhaps  most  clearly  in  Tonga, 
precisely  because  there  rank  and  power  were  in  a  measure 
divorced:  while  the  spiritual  supremacy  was  vested  in  the 
Tuitonga,  political  sovereignty  had  been  arrogated  before  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  by  a  presumably  distant 
kinsman,  hence  comparatively  lesser  nobleman.  But  though 
this  king  might  flout  the  pontiff’s  counsel  in  temporal  af¬ 
fairs,  there  was  no  question  concerning  the  Tuitonga’s  social 
preeminence.  Chafing  under  the  humiliation,  King  Finau 
would  indeed  take  pains  to  avoid  a  meeting,  but  whenever  it 
occurred  he  yielded  precedence  and  homage  in  the  traditional 
fashion. 

Within  the  body  of  the  upper  caste  there  was  an  interest¬ 
ing  sub-group  that  played  a  significant  part  in  the  culture  of 
these  tribes.  They  were  perhaps  the  lowest  of  their  class, 
yet  in  some  islands,  such  as  Samoa,  they  rather  than  the  titu- 


78  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

lar  sovereign  held  the  reins  of  power.  They  embraced  the 
courtiers  and  landed  gentry,  corresponding  at  once  to  the 
lesser  nobility  and  the  upper  middle  class  of  European  coun¬ 
tries.  It  was  often  from  this  class  that  the  priests  were  re¬ 
cruited,  but  though  their  status  appears  in  such  cases  inter¬ 
mediate  between  the  pinnacles  and  the  dregs  of  Polynesian 
society,  they  were  essentially  to  be  considered  a  part  of  the 
regnant  caste  and  as  pillars  of  the  established  order.  How¬ 
ever,  in  Mangaia  the  noble  of  highest  hereditary  rank  was 
at  the  same  time  the  priest  of  the  chief  deity,  and  a  corre¬ 
sponding  union  of  priestly  and  heraldic  preeminence  charac¬ 
terized  the  Maori.  Certain  phenomena  in  the  religion  of 
these  tribes  become  more  readily  intelligible  when  one  recalls 
that  it  was  molded  in  part  by  a  group  of  men  specially  de¬ 
voted  to  the  management  of  sacred  things  and  serving  as 
professional  systematizers  and  standardizers  of  current 

thought. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  creations  of  these  guardians 
of  things  divine  was  the  taboo  concept.  Our  own  word 
“taboo’’  is  derived  from  the  Polynesian  tapu  (dialectically, 
tabu,  kapu),  but  it  is  far  from  designating  all  the  ramifica¬ 
tions  and  shades  of  meaning  that  clustered  about  its  proto¬ 
type.  The  aboriginal  term  was,  like  mana,  the  expression 
for  a  highly  abstract  concept,  but  while  mana  invariably  de¬ 
noted  a  startling  deviation  from  the  norm,  tapu  was  dis¬ 
tinctly  ambivalent :  it  represented  the  holiness  of  the  divine, 
setting  it  off  from  the  profaneness  of  plebeian  (■ noa )  things 
and  persons ;  but  that  very  attitude  which  lent  mystic  power 
to  the  deities  and  their  earthly  vicegerents  invested  them  with 
a  “mysterious  perilousness  and  unapproachableness  for  the 
uninitiated,  or  indeed,  for  any  one  of  lesser  quality.  In 
some  unaccountable  way  the  sacredness  flowed  out  from  the 
divine  chief  and  communicated  itself  to  what  he  ate  or  drank 


POLYNESIAN  RELIGION 


79 

or  wore.  No  Tongan  durst  appropriate  the  remains  of  a 
superior’s  meal  on  pain  of  a  sore  throat ;  the  cloak  discarded 
by  a  Maori  chief  could  not  with  safety  be  donned  by  an  at¬ 
tendant.  A  Mangaia  pontiff’s  body  could  not  be  tattooed; 
his  equivalent  in  Tonga  could  not  be  either  tattooed  or  cir¬ 
cumcised  like  other  men,  since  no  one  was  competent  to  touch 
him  with  immunity,  and  when  he  was  buried  by  his  inferiors, 
as  he  inevitably  had  to  be,  these  were  reckoned  infected  for 
ten  months.  A  number  of  prohibitions  were  widely  dis¬ 
tributed.  Thus,  no  one  was  allowed  to  touch  a  superior’s 
head  or  pass  close  behind  him  or  eat  in  his  presence.  A 
Hawaiian  whose  shadow  fell  upon  the  king’s  house  or  back 
or  who  climbed  over  the  royal  stockade  was  doomed  :  to  defy 
these  taboos  was  tantamount  to  asserting  oneself  an  equal 
or  superior. 

Such  rigor  could  not  of  course  be  consistently  extended 
to  all  the  numerous  ritual  prohibitions  without  extraordi¬ 
nary  inconvenience  to  all  concerned.  How,  for  example, 
could  the  menial  tasks  connected  with  temple-building  be 
undertaken  by  common  workingmen  who  were  bound  to  pol¬ 
lute  the  holy  site?  Polynesian  casuistry  was  equal  to  the 
problem  by  devising  a  ritual  mechanism  that  transformed 
the  tapu  spot  into  a  temporarily  no  a  one.  Again,  in  Tonga 
the  rule  held  that  any  one  who,  however  accidentally,  had 
touched  a  grandee  was  infected  and  might  not  feed  himself 
with  his  hands  without  danger  of  disease;  but  that  menace 
was  averted  if  he  touched  the  soles  of  any  superior  chief’s 
feet  with  the  palms  and  backs  of  both  hands.  Since  the 
supreme  chief  was  not  always  present  to  absolve — as  he 
alone  was  competent  to  do — from  infractions  of  the  taboo 
against  himself,  touching  one  of  his  consecrated  bowls  was 
considered  an  equivalent  rite  of  purification.  In  Samoa, 
where  the  gentry  rather  than  the  titular  chiefs  held  the  reins 


8o 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


of  power,  the  grimly  humorous  fiction  evolved  that  an  un¬ 
popular  ruler  could  be  stripped  of  his  sacred  character  by 
being  sprinkled  with  coconut  water,  whereupon  he  might  be 
summarily  dispatched.  Practical  considerations  also  dic¬ 
tated  whimsical  exceptions.  In  Tonga,  where  the  kava  was 
drunk  on  every  possible  occasion,  both  plant  and  beverage 
were  held  immune  to  infection  by  tapu,  and  the  meanest  cook 
might  chew  the  root  touched  by  the  Tuitonga. 

These  concessions  to  the  exigencies  of  daily  life  were 
doubtless  merely  unconscious  rationalizations  and  must  not 
be  taken  to  throw  doubt  on  the  sincerity  and  intensity  of  na¬ 
tive  belief  in  the  taboo  system.  Of  that  there  is  indisputable 
and  ample  evidence.  The  strong  hold  the  scheme  had  on  the 
Polynesian  mind  is  indicated  by  its  preservation  among  the 
Tikopians,  who  live  in  isolation  from  their  congeners,  in  the 
midst  of  Melanesian  populations.  It  is  shown  by  the  extent 
to  which  even  so  skeptical  a  scoffer  as  King  Finau  was  will¬ 
ing  to  bow  to  its  decrees.  Above  all,  it  is  demonstrated  by 
the  survival  of  its  spirit  among  the  thoroughly  Christianized 
Tongans  of  to-day,  who  have  unconsciously  applied  their 
old  notions  of  the  inviolability  of  the  sacred  to  the  Sunday 
and  the  churches  of  the  new  creed.  As  fanatical  Sabbatar¬ 
ians  they  will  not  even  pluck  a  flower  or  break  a  branch  on 
the  tapu  day,  nor  will  they  countenance  any  dances  or  social 
gatherings  in  the  tapu  house  of  worship.  Nay,  even  water 
from  the  roof  of  a  church  is  never  stored  or  used,  and  only 
recently  the  death  of  a  child  was  traced  to  the  transgression 
of  this  rule. 

Under  the  old  regime  one  practical  application  of  the 
principle  played  a  conspicuous  part  and  did  much  to 
strengthen  the  dominance  of  the  upper  caste.  In  some  of 
the  islands  private  ownership  was  virtually  abrogated  by 
the  law  that  anything  touched  by  a  superior  became  taboo, 


POLYNESIAN  RELIGION 


81 


hence  no  longer  proper  for  common  use.  Thus,  the  canoe 
or  house  entered  by  the  chief  became  his  property.  Contrari¬ 
wise,  it  was  not  only  inconceivable  that  a  commoner  should 
trespass  on  a  nobleman’s  traditional  domain,  but  the  noble 
might  arbitrarily  impose  a  taboo  his  inferiors  were  bound 
to  respect.  A  piece  of  white  barkcloth  in  the  shape  of  a 
lizard  or  shark  would  serve  notice  that  the  fruits  or  flowers 
in  its  vicinity  were  not  to  be  disturbed ;  a  similar  token  by  a 
stream  would  forbid  its  use  by  the  common  herd.' 

Thus,  social  privilege  and  religious  belief  were  closely  in¬ 
tertwined  in  the  Polynesian  community.  A  query  that  ob¬ 
trudes  itself  in  this  connection  can  unfortunately  no  longer 
be  answered  satisfactorily.  That  the  beneficiaries  of  the  es¬ 
tablished  order  should  accept  it  without  reflection  is  intel¬ 
ligible.  But  what  of  the  down-trodden  masses?  Were  they 
uniformly  cowed  into  an  acceptance  of  their  lot,  content  to 
believe  that  their  masters  were  the  sons  and  darlings  of  the 
gods  ?  Or  were  there  adventurous  spirits  among  them  who 
insisted  that  there  were  gods,  as  well  as  death-defying  souls, 
for  themselves  in  the  universe?  We  shall  never  know,  but 
we  can  guess. 

Pantheon 

The  social  organization  of  Polynesia  affected  religious  cul¬ 
ture  m  a  way  already  suggested :  whatever  beliefs  and  rites 
may  have  been  current  among  the  people  at  large  were  co¬ 
ordinated  and  systematized  by  a  guild  of  professional  theo¬ 
logians.  As  Gill  puts  it: 

Correct  knowledge  of  these  “mysteries”  was  possessed  only 
by  the  priests  and  “wise  men”  of  the  different  tribes.  By  them 
the  teachings  of  the  past  were  embodied  in  songs,  to  be  chanted 
at  their  national  festivals. 


82 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


Even  apart  from  these  esoteric  elaborations,  the  bluebloods 
standardized  that  part  of  the  tribal  theology  which  linked 
their  line  with  that  of  its  divine  founders.  For  the  patent  of 
nobility  sometimes  consisted  precisely  in  the  knowledge  of 
the  poetic  chants  eulogizing  the  heroic  ancestor  of  the  family. 
Even  lesser  men  might  contribute  to  the  development  of  re¬ 
ligious  thought  where,  as  in  Hawaii,  a  retinue  of  minstrels, 
irrespective  of  rank,  jointly  concocted  laudatory  songs  in 
honor  of  their  noble  patrons.  The  total  effect  of  these  tend¬ 
encies  was  a  complexity  far  transcending  what  would  be 
deemed  possible  in  an  illiterate  community,  nay,  rivaling 
that  of  ancient  classical  mythology.  A  few  samples  must 
suffice. 

On  Tonga  six  classes  of  supernatural  beings  were  recog¬ 
nized,  one  of  them  being  constituted  by  Moui,  who  Atlas¬ 
like  supported  the  earth  and  occasionally,  like  the  god  Anuto 
of  the  Tami,  caused  earthquakes  by  turning  about  in  his 
usual  prostrate  position.  All  the  other  gods  were  conceived 
as  inhabiting  the  island  of  Pulotu,  northwest  of  Tonga, 
where  all  good  things  abounded,  but  where  no  mortal  could 
eat  the  food  or  breathe  the  air  without  subsequently  sicken¬ 
ing  and  dying.  One  of  the  five  groups  properly  belonging 
to  Pulotu  comprised  the  mischievous  sprites  or  hobgoblins, 
who  play  tricks  on  the  natives,  trip  them  up  or  pinch  them 
in  the  dark,  or  otherwise  molest  them  in  a  minor  way,  hence 
spend  most  of  their  time  in  Tonga.  Of  the  remainder,  two 
classes  excelled  in  power  and  effect  on  native  life, — the 
primeval  gods,  numbering  about  three  hundred,  and  the 
spirits  of  the  higher  nobility.  The  original  attendants  of 
the  former  were  without  influence,  while  the  souls  of  the 
lesser  nobility  or  gentry  played  the  part  of  intermediators 
between  their  living  kin  and  the  major  deities,  or  by  suffer- 


POLYNESIAN  RELIGION  83 

ance  were  protectors  of  the  meaner  orders  of  society.  In 
short,  only  two  of  the  six  groups  of  gods,  the  original  dei¬ 
ties  and  the  spirits  of  the  patricians,  had  independent  power 
and  were  the  objects  of  a  cult;  and  they  alone  could  make 
direct  revelations  to  the  priesthood.  The  spirits  of  the 
nobles  were  invoked  at  their  graves,  while  a  limited  number 
of  the  major  deities  had  special  temples  dedicated  to  their 
worship;  indeed,  some  of  them  had  as  many  as  five  or  six. 
Of  the  major  gods,  that  of  war,  Taliai  Tubo,  took  prece¬ 
dence,  as  the  patron  of  the  king,  with  whom  he  sometimes 
communicated  without  a  priestly  go-between  in  the  man¬ 
ner  to  be  described  below.  Other  deities  protected  special 
families  or  professions  or  presided  over  certain  depart¬ 
ments  of  nature.  Thus,  Tubo  Totai  combined  the  func¬ 
tions  of  a  tutelary  of  King  Finau’s  family  and  of  mariners; 
Alo  Alo  controlled  the  weather  and  vegetation;  and  Tan- 
galoa  was  the  protector  of  skilled  artisans.  One  attribute 
peculiar  to  this  class  of  gods  among  the  Tongans  is  the 
faculty  of  entering  the  bodies  of  lizards,  porpoises,  and 
other  animals. 

Hawaii  presents  an  at  least  equally  impressive  array  of 
supernatural  powers,  but  no  more  than  in  Tonga  were  they 
all  uniformly  adored  by  all  groups  of  the  population;  in¬ 
deed,  Malo  cites  only  four  as  great  national  gods,  the  great¬ 
est,  Ku,  being  the  special  guardian  of  royalty  but  wor¬ 
shiped  in  various  forms  by  lesser  men:  Ku-ka-00  was  the 
god  of  peasants,  Ku-ula  that  of  fishermen,  while  carpenters 
prayed  to  Ku-pulupulu,  and  bird-snarers  to  Ku-huluhulu- 
manu.  Thus,  each  recognized  vocation  had  a  particular 
patron  saint, — the  bark-eaters  or  barkcloth  decorators 
among  women  prayed  to  a  special  divinity,  and  even  thieves 
had  their  distinctive  god.  Apart  from  these  functional 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


84 

deities,  there  were  gods  localized  in  different  parts  of  the 
globe,  such  as  the  four  quarters,  or  residing  in  inanimate 
objects  ready  to  execute  the  wishes  of  their  owners. 

But  the  metaphysicians  of  the  South  Sea  Islands  not 
only  constructed  an  elaborate  pantheon,  in  connection  with 
it  they  also  created  a  remarkable  cosmology  and  cosmogony, 
of  which  the  Mangaian  scheme  is  a  fair  representative. 
The  universe  was  conceived  as  the  hollow  of  a  vast  coco¬ 
nut  shell  terminating  in  a  thick  stem  tapering  to  a  point, 
with  Mangaia  above  the  central  aperture  at  the  top  of  the 
shell,  and  at  least  ten  celestial  tiers  of  azure  stone  arching 
one  beyond  the  other  above  Mangaia.  The  terminal  point 
of  the  structure  was  regarded  as  a  spirit  but  not  in  human 
shape :  'The  entire  fabric  of  the  universe  is  constantly  sus¬ 
tained  by  this  primary  being.”  Immediately  above  it  is  a 
stouter  demon,  and  at  the  thickest  part  of  the  stem  a  third 
being  completes  the  trio  of  “the  primary,  ever-stationary, 
sentient  spirits,  who  themselves  constitute  the  foundation 
and  insure  the  permanence  and  well-being  of  all  the  rest 
of  the  universe.”  In  the  lowest,  narrowest  portion  of 
Avaiki,  the  interior  of  the  shell,  there  sits  a  woman,  Vari- 
ma-te-takere,  so  cramped  in  position  that  her  knees  and 
chin  meet.  Eager  for  progeny,  she  at  one  time  plucked  off 
a  bit  of  her  right  side,  which  became  a  male  being,  Vatea, 
half  man,  half  porpoise;  and  successively  produced  five 
other  children  in  like  manner.  Vatea  married  a  female 
spirit,  Papa,  and  begot  the  first  beings  of  purely  human 
shape,  viz.,  the  twin  gods  Rongo  and  Tangaroa,  of  whom 
the  former  gained  the  ascendancy;  and  it  was  one  of  his 
grandsons  that  pulled  Mangaia  up  from  the  interior  of  the 
great  shell  to  become  the  center  of  the  universe.  Avaiki 
is  peopled  by  a  throng  of  deities,  who  marry,  multiply,  and 
live  like  human  beings.  Thence  come  all  the  arts  of  life, 


POLYNESIAN  RELIGION  85 

whether  peacefully  copied  from  their  original  possessors  or 
wrested  from  them  like  that  of  fire-making,  which  the 
demigod  Maui  gained  from  Mauike  in  mortal  combat. 
There,  too,  lives  the  terrible  female  ogre  Miru,  who  cooks 
and  devours  the  souls  of  all  who  die  a  natural  death.  But 
the  warriors  slain  in  battle  elude  her  fires  and  leap  into  the 
blue  expanse  above  to  be  transformed  into  the  clouds  of 
the  dry  season.  The  celestial  vault,  at  first  a  pitiable  six  feet 
above  the  earth,  was  raised  to  its  present  height  by  Maui’s 
puissance. 

These  brief  indications  must  suffice.  In  contemplating 
with  amazement  this  wonderful  edifice  of  philosophical 
fancy,  we  must  discriminate,  at  least  in  principle,  between 
myth  and  religion.  Clearly  it  was  not  obligatory  on  a 
Mangaian  to  accept  each  and  every  element  of  the  theory 
laid  down  by  his  theologians  in  the  sense  in  which  one  of 
our  fundamentalists  is  committed  to  the  acceptance  of  the 
Scriptures;  for  Mr.  Gill  reports  not  a  few  discordant  vari¬ 
ants.  Thus,  according  to  one  version  the  souls  that  fall  into 
Miru’s  clutches  are  annihilated,  while  another  has  it  that 
they  revive  after  passing  through  her  intestines.  Again, 
some  held  that  even  the  braves  who  have  perished  on  the 
battlefield  are  eaten  by  Rongo  and  only  ascend  to  the  sky 
after  ultimate  liberation  from  his  body.  In  other  words, 
the  rigor  in  the  observance  of  ceremonial  to  be  noted  later 
was  not  incompatible  with  a  certain  latitudinarianism  in 
point  of  doctrine.  Or,  rather,  cosmology  and  cosmogony 
were  only  in  part  a  matter  of  dogma  or  religion  at  all, 
whence  the  observed  freedom  of  belief. 

The  mutual  independence  of  poetical  or  philosophical 
fancy  on  the  one  hand  and  devotional  fervor  on  the  other 
is  demonstrated  by  another  reflection.  No  more  than 
Chronos  held  the  first  place  in  the  religious  consciousness  of 


86 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


Greece  did  Vari  and  Vatea, — let  alone  the  three  non-human 
demons  below  Avaiki, — gain  a  hegemony  among  the  gods 
by  their  priority  in  time.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  had  no 
cult  whatsoever,  while  Rongo,  Vatea’s  son,  was  the  fore¬ 
most  of  Mangaian  gods.  The  explanation  is  not  hard  to 
find:  these  cosmogonic  and  cosmological  subtleties  were 
priestly  or  poetical  glosses  on  the  popular  creed  and  had  as 
little  religious  significance  for  their  inventors  as  for  the 
populace  at  large.  The  delights  of  untrammeled  specula¬ 
tion  with  sacred  beings  as  a  starting-point  were  one  thing; 
illumination  through  direct  intercourse  with  the  divine  was 
something  radically  different. 


Communion  with  the  Supernatural 

The  deliberate  quest  of  a  vision  was  not  practiced,  or  at 
all  events  was  not  a  characteristic  usage  in  Polynesia.  But 
great  importance  was  attached  to  dreams.  The  spirit  of  a 
deceased  parent  might  appear  to  a  sleeper  and  map  out 
his  course  of  action,  aiding  him  in  the  achievement  of  great 
enterprises.  Again,  dreams  were  interpreted  as  ominous  of 
impending  calamities,  as  when  a  Tongan  woman  dreamt 
of  the  Tuitonga  leading  a  force  of  spirits  against  the  people 
at  the  time  of  the  harvest  festival;  or  when  another  visited 
the  island  of  Pulotu  in  her  sleep  and  heard  the  decree  of 
the  god  Hikuleo  that  the  inhabitants  of  Vavau  were  to  suf¬ 
fer  some  great  misfortune.  Similarly,  a  profound  im¬ 
pression  was  created  when  Funaki,  the  wife  of  a  great  chief, 
reported  that  the  late  king  of  Tonga  had  appeared  to  her 
in  her  dreams  on  several  nights  in  succession  and  complained 
of  the  conspiracies  hatched  by  his  son’s  enemies.  Inci¬ 
dentally,  the  last-mentioned  case  seems  to  supply  a  good 


POLYNESIAN  RELIGION  87 

example  of  a  transition  from  an  ordinary  dream  to  a  sought 
vision.  For  Funaki,  who  was  deeply  attached  to  her  de¬ 
ceased  royal  master,  who  had  indeed  been  suspected  of  an 
intrigue  with  her,  slept  and  mourned  regularly  on  the  king’s 
grave  for  six  months ;  and  it  is  not  at  all  unlikely  that  this 
was  done  at  least  partly  with  the  expectation  of  an  appari¬ 
tion. 

Experiences  in  swoon  or  trance  also  produced  an  effect 
at  least  on  the  beliefs  of  individuals.  Thus,  according  to 
the  accepted  Maori  notion,  the  soul  of  the  deceased  traveled 
to  the  northernmost  point  of  New  Zealand,  where  it  lacer¬ 
ated  itself  with  obsidian  after  the  manner  of  mourners; 
then  it  slid  or  leapt  into  the  underworld,  undergoing  succes¬ 
sive  deaths,  passing  to  lower  and  lower  regions,  and  was 
ultimately  doomed  to  extinction.  But  this  general  picture 
would  sometimes  receive  a  personal  tinge.  For  example, 
there  was  a  woman  who  died,  was  pursued  by  a  gigantic 
bird  in  the  realm  of  spirits,  but  escaped  to  her  father,  who 
sent  her  back  to  tend  her  child ;  he  also  gave  her  two  sweet- 
potatoes,  and  by  throwing  them  to  pursuing  ghosts  on  the 
return  trip  she  succeeded  in  making  her  escape.  Naturally 
the  priests  were  conspicuous  for  their  weird  experiences  and 
for  making  them  socially  significant.  Thus,  a  Hawaiian 
priest  who  had  seen  the  wraith  of  a  man  and  interpreted 
this  as  a  token  of  his  tribesman’s  approaching  death  could 
readily  prevail  upon  the  victim  to  pledge  a  propitiatory  rite 
and  pay  the  requisite  fees. 

The  characteristic  mode  of  entering  into  communion 
with  divine  beings,  however,  was  not  through  a  mere  the- 
ophany  but  by  a  veritable  inspiration:  the  visitant  was  be¬ 
lieved  to  enter  the  body  of  the  person  favored  and  to  speak 
through  him,  whence  the  appropriate  Mangaian  designa- 


88 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


tion  of  a  priest  as  a  “god-box”  and  the  Tongan  term  “god- 
anchor.”  This  custom  is  as  characteristic  of  remote  Tiko- 
pia  as  of  Tonga  and  Hawaii. 

« 

A  man  who  is  possessed  shakes  and  quivers  all  over,  his  eyes 
get  red  and  he  begins  to  shout  and,  when  the  shouting  is  heard 
by  the  people,  all  run  to  hear  what  the  atua  (ancestor)  has  to 
say. 

The  Tikopians,  Dr.  Rivers  informs  us,  regularly  invoke  the 
spirits  to  determine  the  future  course  of  events,  especially 
in  case  of  sickness.  Apparently,  it  is  not  known  before¬ 
hand  which  of  the  summoners  is  to  be  possessed;  also  if  an 
adverse  divination  is  offered,  additional  ghosts  are  called 
in  order,  if  possible,  to  reverse  the  prediction.  Here  com¬ 
moners,  as  well  as  chiefs,  may  be  inspired;  but,  character¬ 
istically  enough,  the  former  are  possessed  only  by  the  spirit 
of  a  dead  commoner,  nor  may  the  spirit  of  a  chief  be  ques¬ 
tioned  by  any  one  of  lesser  dignity. 

In  Tonga  only  the  major  gods  and  the  souls  of  nobles 
possessed  the  priests,  who  for  the  time  being  spoke  in  the 
god’s  name  and  took  precedence  of  the  king  himself,  though 
immediately  after  the  performance  they  resumed  their  nor¬ 
mal  station.  The  session  was  ushered  in  by  a  feast  with 
kava-drinking,  the  inevitable  accompaniment  of  Polynesian 
ceremonial.  For  a  long  time  the  priest  sat  in  silence,  hands 
clasped  and  eyes  cast  down.  In  answer  to  the  questions 

he  generally  begins  in  a  low  and  very  altered  tone  of  voice, 
which  gradually  rises  to  nearly  its  natural  pitch,  though  some¬ 
times  a  little  above  it.  .  .  .  All  this  is  done  generally  without 
any  apparent  inward  emotion  or  outward  agitation ;  but  on  some 
occasions  his  countenance  becomes  fierce,  and,  as  it  were,  in¬ 
flamed,  and  his  whole  frame  agitated  with  inward  feeling ;  he  is 


POLYNESIAN  RELIGION  89 

seized  with  a  universal  trembling;  the  perspiration  breaks  out 
on  his  forehead,  and  his  lips,  turning  black,  are  convulsed ;  at 
length,  tears  start  in  floods  from  his  eyes,  his  breast  heaves  with 
great  emotion,  and  his  utterance  is  choked.  These  symptoms 
gradually  subside.  Before  this  paroxysm  comes  on,  and  after 
it  is  over,  he  often  eats  as  much  as  four  hungry  men,  under 
other  circumstances,  could  devour.  The  fit  being  now  gone  off, 
he  remains  for  some  time  calm,  and  then  takes  up  a  club  that  is 
placed  by  him  for  the  purpose,  turns  it  over  and  regards  it  at¬ 
tentively  ;  he  then  looks  up  earnestly,  now  to  the  right,  now  to 
the  left,  and  now  again  at  the  club;  afterwards  he  looks  up 
again,  and  about  him  in  like  manner,  and  then  again  fixes  his 
eyes  upon  his  club,  and  so  on  for  several  times ;  at  length  he  sud¬ 
denly  raises  the  club,  and,  after  a  moment’s  pause,  strikes  the 
ground,  or  the  adjacent  part  of  the  house,  with  considerable 
force :  immediately  the  god  leaves  him,  and  he  rises  up  and  re¬ 
tires  to  the  back  of  the  ring  among  the  people. 

In  interpreting  this  phenomenon  the  early  observer  quoted 
above  was  already  on  the  right  track.  Denying  a  mere  at¬ 
tempt  at  deception,  he  writes : 

There  can  be  little  doubt  .  .  .  but  that  the  priest  .  .  .  often 
summons  into  actions  the  deepest  feelings  of  devotion  of  which 
he  is  susceptible,  and  by  a  voluntary  act  disposes  his  mind  .  .  . 
to  be  powerfully  affected :  till  at  length  what  began  by  volition 
proceeds  by  involuntary  effort,  and  the  whole  mind  and  body 
become  subjected  to  the  overruling  emotion. 

Similar  manifestations  were  not  restricted  to  the  priest¬ 
hood,  and  hysteria  in  some  of  its  forms  is  still  interpreted 
by  Tongans  as  the  result  of  possession.  In  Mariner’s  day 
the  king  was  occasionally  inspired  by  the  spirit  of  a  one¬ 
time  ruler,  and  a  prince  by  that  of  his  father’s  immediate 
predecessor.  The  latter  found  it  difficult  to  describe  his 


90 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


subjective  impressions  in  retrospect :  he  felt  himself  all  over 
in  a  glow  of  heat  and  quite  restless  and  uncomfortable,  and 
did  not  feel  his  own  personal  identity  as  it  were,  but  seemed 
to  have  a  mind  different  from  his  own  natural  mind,  his 
thoughts  wandering  upon  strange  and  unusual  subjects, 
although  perfectly  sensible  of  surrounding  objects.  When 
asked  how  he  knew  it  was  the  spirit  of  Tukuaho,  his  answer 
was,  “There’s  a  fool !  how  can  I  tell  you  how  I  knew  it ;  I 
felt  and  knew  it  was  so  by  a  kind  of  consciousness;  my 
mind  told  me  it  was  Toogoo  Ahoo  (Tukuaho).”  This  is  an 
excellent  example  of  the  intuitive  insight  of  mystic  experi¬ 
ence  and  at  the  same  time  of  its  ineffableness. 

Women  as  well  as  men  were  capable  of  possession.  The 
laity  generally  reacted  differently  from  the  priests  and  their 
experiences  were  ascribed  to  a  deity  accusing  them  of  re¬ 
ligious  negligence  “not  by  an  apparent  audible  warning,  but 
by  an  inward  compunction  of  conscience.”  Accordingly, 
the  visitation  was  marked  by  low  spirits  and  a  profusion  of 
tears,  possibly  supplemented  by  a  brief  fainting-spell.  Lay¬ 
men,  like  priests,  could  bring  on  a  paroxysm  by  an  act  of 
will,  but  Mariner  witnessed  the  interesting  case  of  a  native 
who  called  for  kava  in  anticipation  of  a  god’s  visit,  yet  was 
obliged  to  acknowledge  amidst  general  surprise  that  he  was 
disappointed. 

The  interpretation  offered  by  this  early  observer  is  in 
accord  with  recent  medical  opinion :  there  is  no  simulation 
of  the  trance,  though  there  is  doubtless  auto-suggestion  in 
the  incipient  stage.  A  number  of  modern  European  cases 
reported  by  Dr.  Stoll  are  obviously  of  the  same  category, 
and  one  of  the  most  instructive  may  be  cited  here.  Dr. 
Stoll  was  taking  a  walk  in  the  vicinity  of  Zurich  one  day. 
Some  distance  ahead  of  him  an  Italian  workingman  was 
marching  along  with  a  bundle  on  his  shoulder.  At  a  turn 


POLYNESIAN  RELIGION 


9i 

in  the  road  this  man  suddenly  tottered  backward,  dropping 
his  bundle  and  the  stick  to  which  it  was  tied,  and  beat  the 
air  with  his  arms  as  though  trying  to  find  a  hold.  Next  he 
fell  on  his  back,  soon  rising  to  the  height  of  a  foot  but  only 
to  fall  again  head  foremost  on  the  hard  pavement.  His 
body,  supported  only  by  head  and  feet,  curved  like  an  arch, 
then  was  jerked  up,  and  altogether  he  presented  the  picture 
of  a  fish  floundering  out  of  the  water.  When  Dr.  Stoll 
came  up,  the  Italian  had  become  quiet  and  had  apparently 
lost  consciousness.  After  a  while  he  awoke  as  though  from 
a  deep  sleep,  looked  about  in  surprise,  patted  his  head,  which 
was  doubtless  suffering  considerable  pain  from  its  repeated 
contact  with  the  road,  and  finally  inquired  for  the  road  to 
Lucerne,  at  the  same  time  presenting  a  certificate  attesting 
his  treatment  for  epilepsy  in  a  Swiss  hospital.  He  had  ob¬ 
viously  trained  himself  to  the  voluntary  performance  of 
epileptiform  fits  in  order  to  arouse  the  charitable  instincts 
of  passers-by.  But  as  soon  as  he  had  decided  on  an  attack, 
the  further  course  of  events  was  purely  automatic;  no  one 
could  have  willed  the  total  series  of  single  events  crowded 
into  so  narrow  a  space  of  time,  nor  would  any  sane  person 
have  deliberately  wished  his  skull  to  undergo  the  maltreat¬ 
ment  described  above.2 


Ritualism 

As  in  a  sense  an  outpost  of  Old  World  civilization,  Poly¬ 
nesia  reveals  more  kinship  in  the  concrete  elements  of  cere¬ 
monial  procedure  with  Africa  and  New  Guinea  than  with 
America.  Among  these  features  of  Polynesian  ritualism, 
bloody  sacrifices  play  a  prominent  part.  The  Crow  limited 
themselves  to  self-torture  in  attempting  to  placate  the 
powers  of  the  universe,  and  this  practice  was  by  no  means 


92  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

unknown  in  the  South  Seas.  In  Tonga,  indeed,  there  was 
a  specific  analogy  in  that  people  regularly  sacrificed  a  little 
finger  in  order  to  bring  about  the  recovery  of  a  superior 
relative ;  hardly  an  adult  had  his  hands  intact,  and  Mariner 
witnessed  a  violent  contest  between  two  children  five  years 
of  age,  each  claiming  the  favor  of  having  the  ceremony  per¬ 
formed  on  him,  “so  little  do  they  fear  the  pain  of  the  opera¬ 
tion.”  Fasting  was  likewise  a  Polynesian  usage,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  at  a  certain  stage  in  the  Hawaiian  Luakini  cere¬ 
mony.  But  far  more  conspicuous  were  the  offerings  of 
domesticated  animals,  especially  pigs,  which  at  the  great 
festivals  were  sacrificed  in  droves :  thus  at  the  festival  just 
mentioned  as  many  as  eight  hundred  hogs  were  baked,  and 
even  in  the  normal  consultation  of  an  oracle,  as  described 
above,  a  pig  was  killed.  Equally  important  was  the  ren¬ 
dering  of  human  sacrifices.  Malo  would  have  it  that  at 
the  Luakini  rite  only  criminals  were  slain  in  propitiation  of 
the  deity,  but  his  editor’s  contention  that  a  nobler  offering 
was  required  is  borne  out  by  the  data  from  other  groups. 
When  a  Maori  chief  erected  a  public  edifice,  he  might  even 
offer  a  favorite  child  to  be  buried  as  a  foundation  stone  for 
the  building.  Infanticide,  like  the  finger-sacrifice,  was  also 
practiced  at  Tonga  to  remove  a  relative’s  illness,  and  when 
a  sanctuary  had  been  defiled  by  bloodshed  a  chief  was  con¬ 
tent  to  have  one  of  his  children  strangled  to  avert  a  ca¬ 
lamity. 

In  the  stress  laid  on  omens  and  the  elaboration  of  a  system 
of  divination,  though  probably  not  so  complex  as  in  some 
parts  of  Africa,  the  Polynesians  again  reveal  their  kinship 
with  Old  World  culture.  Weather  signs  were  noted,  es¬ 
pecially  the  appearance  of  the  clouds,  and  as  late  as  the 
time  of  Queen  Liliuokalani’s  accession  in  Hawaii  the  sight 
of  a  rainbow  was  hailed  as  a  symbol  of  her  dignity.  Some 


POLYNESIAN  RELIGION  93 

soothsayers  even  paralleled  the  classical  technique  of 
augury  by  the  flight  of  birds  or  from  the  entrails  of  ani¬ 
mals.  In  Tonga  a  coconut  with  the  husk  on  was  spun  like 
a  top,  and  the  direction  of  the  upper  part  was  taken  to 
indicate  whether  a  patient  might  be  expected  to  recover  or 
die.  Apparently,  in  contrast  with  African  practice  the  in¬ 
quirer  might  arbitrarily  fix  the  meaning  of  a  given  event 
before  consulting  such  an  oracle.  The  importance  often 
attached  to  trivial  occurrences  is  well  illustrated  by  Mari¬ 
ner  s  inopportune  sneeze  on  a  solemn  occasion,  for  which  he 
narrowly  escaped  the  death  penalty. 

Still  another  trait  allying  Polynesian  with  West  African 
ritualism  is  its  iconic  character.  In  Mangaia  thirteen  pieces 
of  iron-wood  roughly  carved  into  the  semblance  of  the 
human  shape  arid  wrapped  up  in  fine  cloth  represented 
as  many  gods  and  were  stored  in  the  pontiff’s  sanctuary.  A 
piocession  round  an  island  of  the  Hawaiian  group  with  one 

of  the  idols  formed  an  integral  part  of  the  Makahiki  cere¬ 
mony. 

The  Hawaiians  usually  worshiped  their  gods  by  means  of 
idols,  believing  that  by  the  performance  of  certain  rites,  power, 
mana,  was  imparted  to  the  idols,  so  that  they  became  a  means 
of  communication  with  unseen  divinities.  They  imagined  that 
a  spirit  resided  in  or  conveyed  influence  through  the  image  rep¬ 
resenting  it. 

As  these  images  were  physically  more  impressive  than  the 
njomm  effigies  of  the  Ekoi,  so  they  seem  to  have  been  alto¬ 
gether  of  a  more  public  character, — objects  rather  to  be 
venerated  from  afar  and  only  on  great  occasions,  than  pa¬ 
trons  with  or  through  whom  to  commune  intimately  in 
everyday  life. 

Next  may  be  mentioned  a  similarity  to  Bukaua  culture, 


94 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


to  wit,  the  extravagant  reliance  on  magical  incantations 
with  the  implied  belief  in  the  power  inherent  in  a  set  for¬ 
mula  of  words.  In  New  Zealand,  especially,  every  under¬ 
taking  of  any  consequence,  whether  relating  to  ostensibly 
sacred  affairs  or  such  apparently  secular  undertakings 
as  the  cultivation  of  the  soil,  the  launching  of  a 
canoe,  or  a  hunting  trip,  was  accompanied  by  the  recital 
of  an  appropriate  spell.  Incantations  could  compel  the  re¬ 
turn  of  an  errant  lover,  prod  the  memory  of  a  youthful 
novice  in  the  arts,  or  wreak  vengeance  on  a  personal  enemy, 
the  last-mentioned  object  being  usually  attained  by  a  com¬ 
bination  with  sympathetic  magic.  Small  wonder,  then,  that 
in  the  Maori  college  the  young  nobleman,  to  whom  alone 
its  doors  were  open,  had  to  learn  above  everything  the  mys¬ 
tic  spells  that  would  bend  the  universe  to  his  will,  possibly 
by  making  the  gods  favor  his  desires,  possibly  by  their  in¬ 
trinsic  efficacy. 

The  more  impressive  performances  consisted  largely  in 
the  combination  of  the  aforementioned  features,  to  which 
some  additional  elements,  often  of  a  dramatic  nature  or  in 
furtherance  of  sociability  might  be  added;  practices  clus¬ 
tering  about  the  taboo  concept  would  almost  inevitably  be 
injected  into  the  procedure.  Thus,  the  Luakini  of  Hawaii 
may  be  largely  defined  in  terms  of  the  phenomena  already 
familiar  to  the  reader.  Its  celebration  was  in  honor  of  Ku 


and  involved  the  erection  of  a  special  temple  to  ensure  a 
successful  campaign  or  to  promote  the  crops.  The  per¬ 
formance  involved  the  imposition  and  removal  of  taboos, 
the  carving  of  images,  the  destruction  of  vast  numbers  of 
pigs  and  some  human  beings,  the  recital  of  litanies  by  the 
priests  and  of  responses  by  the  congregation.  In  the  Maka- 
hiki  some  of  the  same  elements  recur,  supplemented  by  a 
procession  with  a  sacred  idol,  a  sham  attack  on  the  King, 


POLYNESIAN  RELIGION  95 

the  complete  cessation  of  all  ordinary  labor,  and  a  succes¬ 
sion  of  athletic  contests  and  other  games.  A  taboo  on 
work,  coupled  with  indulgence  in  such  secular  pastimes  as 
dancing,  wrestling,  and  boxing,  was  also  linked  with  devo¬ 
tional  exercises  in  the  harvest  feast  of  Tonga,  where  pugil¬ 
istic  combats,  as  well  as  promiscuous  fighting,  likewise 
marked  the  offering  of  fruits  to  the  weather  god,  Alo  Alo. 
In  the  same  group  kava  drinking  was  the  invariable  con¬ 
comitant  of  sacred  ritual,  from  the  invocation  of  a  deity  in 
a  private  attempt  to  be  inspired  to  the  most  elaborate  na¬ 
tional  solemnities. 

When  we  turn  from  the  specific  features  of  religious  be¬ 
havior  to  the  spirit  animating  it,  we  can  best  characterize 
Polynesia  as  representing  the  acme  of  formalism,  as  em¬ 
bodying  to  the  greatest  degree  a  tendency  displayed  by 
many  other  primitive  groups.  Just  as  some  peoples  in  the 
course  of  human  history  have  acquired  certain  literary  de¬ 
vices,  say,  of  versification,  and  in  the  joy  of  discovery  have 
played  with  their  new  toy  till  sense  was  sacrificed  to  jingle, 
so  the  Polynesians  after  achieving  an  intricate  series  of 
socio-religious  technicalities  seem  to  have  reveled  in  their 
creature  and  made  themselves  its  slaves.  As  among  the 
Crow,  sin  was  independent  of  intent  and  consisted  in  the 
usually  involuntary  infraction  of  an  arbitrary  rule  of  con¬ 
duct,  but  the  Polynesian  taboos  were  incomparably  more 
numerous  than  those  of  the  Plains  Indian  and  were  gener¬ 
ally  of  such  a  nature  as  to  involve  an  indefinite  number  of 
persons.  The  punctilio  typical  of  the  whole  scheme  was  un¬ 
doubtedly  a  powerful  instrumentality  in  the  hands  of  the 
dominant  caste  and  served  to  perpetuate  its  ascendancy.  But 
in  its  efflorescence  it  came  to  subject  the  original  beneficiaries 
themselves  to  considerable  inconvenience.  It  was  all  very 
well  to  impose  the  death  penalty  on  the  plebeian  idol-bearer 


96  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

who  committed  an  error  in  running  on  his  ceremonial  cir¬ 
cuit  or  who  broke  the  stillness  of  the  air  while  the  priests 
were  chanting  some  sacrosanct  litany.  But  Hawaiian  royalty 
itself  suffered  when  the  accidental  barking  of  a  dog  or  the 
hoot  of  an  owl  nullified  the  whole  ceremony.  Similarly  in 
the  case  of  the  Maori  spells. 

The  incantations  had  to  be  most  faithfully  and  religiously 
learnt,  the  least  slip  was  disastrous  to  the  user.  If  a  line  or 
even  a  word  was  missed  the  spell  was  broken. 

Even  Maui,  demigod  and  hero,  was  doomed  to  destruction 
from  his  birth  because  his  father  had  omitted  part  of  the 
baptismal  service.  Practical  necessity  would  require  a 
technique  to  ward  off  the  perils  that  constantly  beset  the 
taboo-ridden  native,  yet  even  these  devices  were  rather  pal¬ 
liatives  than  panaceas  or  prophylactics.  When  a  Tongan 
warrior  had  inadvertently  clubbed  a  foeman  on  hallowed 
ground,  a  chief  might  save  the  community  from  disaster  by 
strangling  his  own  child,  but  even  this  sacrifice  could  not 
ward  off  destruction  from  the  culprit,  whose  death  in  the 
next  skirmish  was  anticipated  by  himself  and  interpreted 
by  public  opinion  as  due  to  the  unappeased  wrath  of  the 
gods.  For  the  gods  themselves  were  largely  the  embodiments 
or  servitors  of  Polynesian  formalism. 

References 

1  The  material  used  in  the  preparation  of  the  preceding  chap¬ 
ter  includes  mainly  the  following:  Tregear;  Martin;  Collocott , 
Malo  ;  Beckwith ;  Gill ;  Rivers. 

2  Stoll :  25  f. 


Part  II:  Critique  of  Theories 


CHAPTER  V 


ANIMISM 

The  Primitive  Concept  of  Spirit 

Tylor,  who  gave  currency  to  the  term  “animism,”  de¬ 
fined  it  as  the  belief  in  spiritual  beings,  and  only  in  that 
sense  shall  it  henceforth  be  used  in  this  book.  But  what  is 
meant  by  “spiritual”?  A  spirit,  according  to  the  diction¬ 
aries,  may  be  identified  with  any  supernatural  being,  good 
or  bad,  and  the  term  has  doubtless  occasionally  been  so  used 
in  the  preceding  pages.  But  the  time  has  come  for  a  more 
rigorous  definition. 

I  By  common  agreement  spiritual  represents  the  opposite 
of  material  existence.  The  difficulty  is  that  if  we  in¬ 
sist  on  the  notion  of  completely  incorporeal  being  there  are 
probably  no  examples  to  be  found  on  primitive  levels.  /  Cer¬ 
tainly  none  appears  in  the  beliefs  of  the  tribes  hitherto  de¬ 
scribed.  The  Sun  of  the  Crow  Indians  lures  a  maiden  to 
the  sky  and  begets  a  son;  the  ghosts  of  the  Ekoi  can  be 
thrown  and  killed  in  a  wrestling-match ;  Anuto,  the  Adas  of 
the  Tami,  turns  about  in  quite  fleshly  fashion;  and  the 
Polynesian  gods  procreated  by  others  that  evolved  from 
portions  of  Vari’s  body  are  surely  not  without  a  taint  of 
materiality.  Nevertheless,  some  of  these  belong  to  a  dif¬ 
ferent  order  of  existence  from  that  of  men,  beasts,  and 
rocks.  They  are  not,  indeed,  immaterial,  but  they  are  cer¬ 
tainly  less  grossly  material  than  the  bodies  of  ordinary 
physical  objects;  and  it  is  this  subtler  mode  of  corporeal 
existence  that  may  be  called  “spiritual”  in  an  ethnological 

99 


IOO 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


sense.  <  It  will  be  well  to  illustrate  by  a  few  additional  ex¬ 
amples  this  double  aspect  of  primitive  animism, — the  un¬ 
questionable  assumption  of  a  relatively  tenuous  kind  of 
being  distinguished  from  the  cruder  reality  of  tangible  mat¬ 
ter,  and  the  equally  indubitable  inability  of  the  ruder  peoples 
v  to  divest  this  notion  of  all  marks  of  materiality.  * 

The  Jagga,  an  East  African  Bantu  people  inhabiting  the 
slopes  of  Mt.  Kilimanjaro,  recognize  a  form  of  existence  cer¬ 
tainly  differing  from  that  of  living  man,  for  their  practices 
largely  center  in  a  cult  of  the  dead,  to  whom  both  good  luck 
and  misfortune  are  ascribed  and  who  are  propitiated  by  their 
descendants  through  prayer  and  offerings  before  every  im¬ 
portant  enterprise.  But  the  disembodied  soul  is  not  freed 
from  the  exigencies  of  earthly  life :  it  must  be  fed  and  thus 
is  dependent  on  the  attentions  of  the  living.  As  in  the  case 
of  the  Ekoi,  these  ghosts,  then,  do  not  survive  because  of 
intrinsic  indestructibility;  on  the  contrary,  they  grow  old, 
are  deprived  of  offerings  by  more  youthful  and  vigorous 
spirits,  and  ultimately  die.1 

The  Negrito  of  the  Andaman  Islands  in  the  Bay  of  Ben¬ 
gal  have  the  highly  typical  belief  that  man  has  a  soul  in  the 
form  of  a  breath,  double,  reflection  or  shadow,  which  can 
leave  its  owner  during  his  sleep  and  travel  far  away.  When 
a  person  dies,  it  is  this  double  that  departs,  becoming  a 
spirit  either  of  the  jungle  or  of  the  sea.  These  beings  some¬ 
times  communicate  with  favored  mortals  and  confer  super¬ 
natural  powers  upon  them,  but  are  generally  dangerous, — 
the  cause  of  sickness  and  death.  As  a  rule  they  are  invisible, 
but  some  people  have  caught  sight  of  them  and  give  dis¬ 
cordant  descriptions  of  their  appearance,  though  mostly  im¬ 
puting  to  them  a  grotesque  or  fearful  aspect,  such  as  abnor¬ 
mally  long  legs  and  arms  joined  to  a  small  body.  Spirits 
are  attracted  by  whistling  but  kept  away  by  singing, — also 


ANIMISM 


IOI 


by  a  firebrand  or  a  human  bone.  As  to  the  habitat  of  the 
ghosts,  accounts  vary  yet  bring  out  clearly  their  relatively 
— but  only  relatively — immaterial  character.  The  spirits 
can  travel  on  rainbows  when  they  visit  their  sleeping  friends 
on  earth,  but  their  activities  have  a  terrestrial  flavor, — they 
hunt  and  fish,  eat  pork  and  turtle,  dance  and  sing.2 

One  more  illustration  will  suffice.  The  Lemhi  Shoshoni 
of  Idaho  recognize  a  life  principle,  mu'gua ,  which  resides 
in  the  head  and  at  death  rises  cloud-fashion  till  it  reaches 
the  house  of  the  mythical  god  or  hero  called  Wolf.  The 
souls  of  the  Indians  are  darker  than  those  of  the  white  men 
and  very  small.  Half-way  up  they  are  met  by  a  spirit  of 
longer  standing,  who  escorts  them  to  their  proper  places. 
Wolf  washes  and  revives  each  soul,  which  then  becomes  a 
ghost,  dzdap.  Ghosts  often  appear  in  the  form  of  skeletons 
and  terrify  mortals.  They  cause  disease  by  entering  the  vic¬ 
tim’s  body  and  must  be  extracted  therefrom  by  the  practi¬ 
tioner;  but  sometimes  they  fly  away  with  the  patient’s  soul 
and  make  him  mad.  As  a  result  of  an  individual  experi¬ 
ence,  Red-shirt  Jim  had  somewhat  unusual  ideas  about  the 
soul  and  the  hereafter.  In  about  1890  he  fell  sick  from 
breaking  a  food  taboo.  He  dreamt  about  a  great  war  and 
was  suddenly  struck  by  a  hailstone.  His  condition  became 
serious,  and  a  separate  lodge  was  built  for  him  to  die  in. 

I  was  still  breathing.  I  thought  of  seeing  my  dead  father  and 
mother,  brother  and  relatives.  I  wished  to  die  immediately. 
For  three  days  and  four  nights  I  lay  in  my  tent.  At  last  on 
the  fourth  day  my  soul  (mu'gua)  came  out  of  my  thigh,  made  a 
step  forward  and  glanced  back  at  my  body.  The  mu'gua  was 
about  as  large  as  this  (ten  inches).  My  body  was  not  yet  life¬ 
less.  When  the  mu'gua  had  made  three  steps  forward,  my  body 
dropped,  cold  and  dead.  I  looked  at  it  for  some  time ;  it  made 
no  movement  at  all. 


102 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


Suddenly  something  came  down  and  went  through  my  soul. 
My  soul  began  to  go  downward.  It  did  not  ascend.  I  reached 
another  world  and  followed  a  trail  there.  I  beheld  a  helper  of 
the  Father  who  was  making  some  dead  men  over  again.  I 
thought  I  might  see  the  Father,  but  could  only  hear  him.  He 
was  saying  to  me,  “You  don’t  look  ill.”  A  kind  of  thin  wire 
was  making  a  noise  at  the  time.  The  Father  had  a  buckskin 
bag;  out  of  its  contents  he  makes  everything.  He  tapped  the 
wire  three  times.  Then  I  was  able  to  see  his  hand,  which  was 
as  small  and  clean  as  a  baby’s.  Then  the  whole  world  opened 
up  and  I  could  see  the  earth  plainly.  I  saw  everything  there.  I 
saw  my  own  body  lying  there.  I  saw  my  own  body  lying  there 
dead. 

The  Sun  told  me  I  would  be  restored  to  life.  I  did  not  walk 
back  and  I  don’t  know  how  I  returned.  Suddenly  I  was  back 
alive.  For  a  few  minutes,  I  had  seen  the  Father.  He  was  a 
handsome  Indian.3 

A  soul  that  is  washed,  a  soul  that  is  ten  inches  tall,  does 
not  correspond  to  our  notion  of  spirituality;  yet  it  is  obvi¬ 
ous  that  the  Shoshoni  conceive  it  as  distinct  from  and 
of  finer  essence  than  the  human  body.  Without  multiply¬ 
ing  examples  we  can  accept  Tylor’s  statement  that  the  soul 
of  primitive  man  is  “a  thin  unsubstantial  image,  in  its 
nature  a  sort  of  vapor,  film  or  shadow.”4,  Abundant  lin¬ 
guistic  evidence  could  be  adduced  to  prove  that  it  is  usually 
designated  by  terms  somehow  denoting  this  finer  type  of 
materiality.  This  alone  would  not  prove  the  absence  of  a 
purely  immaterial  soul-concept,  for  our  own  abstract  terms 
are  reduced  to  a  very  concrete  basis  when  etymologically 
analyzed.  But  in  this  instance  philosophical  thought  has 
not  outrun  its  vestments,  as  is  demonstrated  both  by  the 
preceding  examples  and  others  that  will  presently  be  cited, 
i  In  many  regions  of  the  globe  there  is  a  belief  in  two  or 


ANIMISM 


103 

more  souls.  These  are  generally  localized  in  the  different 
parts  of  the  body  during  life  and  have  separate  careers  after 
death.  Thus,  the  Menomini  of  Wisconsin,  assign  one  soul 
to  the  head,  another  to  the  heart.  The  former  wanders 
about  aimlessly  after  the  burial  of  its  owner,  lingers  about 
the  graveyard,  whistles  in  the  dark,  and  receives  offerings 
of  food;  the  latter  travels  to  the  realm  of  the  spirits,  which 
it  reaches  only  after  conquering  various  temptations  to  eat 
and  drink  on  the  way.5  * 

f  Dualism  was  found  to  characterize  the  psychological  no¬ 
tions  of  the  Tami,  off  the  coast  of  New  Guinea,  and  it  is 
equally  typical  of  the  Bagobo  of  southeastern  Mindanao  in 
the  Philippine  Islands,  who  distinguish  not  a  long  and  a 
short  bubfa  right-hand  soul  and  a  left-hand  soul.  The 
former,  which  is  good,  never  leaves  the  body  except  to  lie, 
still  intimately  associated  with  it,  as  the  shadow  on  the 
right  side;  its  permanent  separation  constitutes  death/  Ex¬ 
cept  for  its  lesser  coarseness,  it  resembles  the  living  Bagobo, 
even  to  the  color  of  the  skin.  After  death,  this  soul  goes 
straight  down  from  the  grave  to  the  lower  world,  which  is 
called  the  Great  (or  One)  Country.  By  purification  it  be¬ 
comes  a  naturalized  spirit,  who  now  joins  his  predecessors 
in  a  mode  of  life  closely  patterned  on  that  of  the  living 
Bagobo.  While  in  life  the  dextral  soul  is  associated  with 
health,  activity  and  joy,  its.  sinistral  counterpart  spells  sick¬ 
ness,  pain,  and  death.  It  is  this  left-hand  soul  that  appears 
as  the  shadow  on  the  left  side  and  also  as  the  reflection  in 
the  water ;  and  it  alone  leaves  the  body  at  night  to  go  flying 
about  the  world.  These  dream  adventures  are  fraught  with 
peril  for  the  owner  of  the  soul,  for  were  a  demon  to  catch 
it  the  bodily  container  would  also  fall  prey  to  its  devourer,. 
At  the  moment  of  death  the  left-hand  soul  leaves  the  body 
for  the  last  time  and  after  the  funeral  becomes  merged  in 


104 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


the  company  of  demons  who  cause  disease  and  dig  up  corpses 
in  order  to  eat  the  flesh.  A  Bagobo,  when  expounding  these 
views,  is  quite  capable  of  theoretically  maintaining  the  tri¬ 
partite  nature  of  man, — the  existence  of  a  body  that  is  buried 
and  dug  up  by  cannibalistic  ogres;  of  a  left-hand  soul  that 
is  ultimately  transformed  into  one  of  these  demons;  of  a 
right-hand  soul  “that  goes  to  the  One  Country  to  continue 
its  existence  in  a  less  substantial  and  more  highly  idealized 
manner  than  on  earth.”  The  interesting  thing,  as  Miss  Bene¬ 
dict  informs  us,  is  that  in  contemplating  his  own  future 
existence  a  native  will  shift  his  point  of  view,  now  merging 
his  individuality  in  that  of  the  demon,  then  in  that  of  the 
denizen  of  the  Great  City,  according  to  the  emotional  re¬ 
actions  of  the  time  being.6 

*  Some  peoples  attribute  four  souls  to  every  human  body. 
This  for  instance,  is  the  belief  of  the  Yuchi,  who  once  resided 
about  the  banks  of  the  Savannah.  One  was  said  to  remain 
rooted  to  the  place  of  death,  two  others — not  sharply  dis¬ 
criminated — hovered  near  the  kin  of  the  deceased,  while 
the  fourth  departed  for  the  point  where  earth  and  sky  meet 
and  attempted  to  leap  into  the  spirit  land  on  a  constantly 
moving  cloud.  The  notion  of  four  mutually  independent 
souls  is  also  attributed  to  some  of  the  Hidatsa  of  North 
Dakota,  who  account  for  the  gradual  sinking  of  the  body 
by  the  consecutive  departure  of  the  four  souls.7 

A  quadruple  soul  has  also  been  recorded  among  the 
Dakota,  but  Dr.  Walker,  writing  of  the  Oglala  subdivision 
of  that  tribe,  reports  only  three  souls,  all  bestowed  on  the 
infant  at  birth  and  all  distinct  in  the  hereafter.  The  ni 
represents  the  vital  force,  being  identified  with  the  breath 
or  shadow  and  causing  death  by  its  departure.  It  accom¬ 
panies  the  second  soul  or  nagi  to  the  god  Skan,  testifies  on 
its  behalf,  and  then  disappears  like  smoke  among  the  stars, 


ANIMISM 


105 


for  it  is  one  of  these  that  Skan  had  implanted  in  the  new¬ 
born  babe.  The  nagi  controls  its  owner’s  disposition  and 
after  his  decease  lingers  near  his  haunts  until  it  appears  be¬ 
fore  Skan  for  judgment.  Finally,  there  is  the  sicun,  which 
is  likened  to  a  shadow;  this  likewise  abides  with  its  owner 
from  birth  until  death,  serving  as  his  guardian  angel,  and 
after  his  demise  conducts  him  to'  the  land  of  spirits,  but 
without  itself  entering  it.  The  last  term  is  also  used  in  a 
radically  different  sense  by  the  Western  Dakota.  If  the 
nagi  does  not  pass  muster,  it  thereby  becomes  a  sicun  and 
must  wander  over  the  world  until  adjudged  worthy  of  ad¬ 
mission  to  the  spirit  trail,  and  these  roamers  are  classed 
with  the  malevolent  beings.  But  the  term  is  applied  with 
still  another  meaning,  viz.,  to  the  tutelary  spirits  a  man  of 
his  free  volition  chooses  in  the  course  of  his  life.8 

These  conceptions,  while  by  no  means  free  from  obscur¬ 
ity,  are  instructive  in  exemplifying  the  attempts  of  the  In¬ 
dian  metaphysicians  to  grapple  with  the  problems  of  psy¬ 
chology  and  of  existence  as  a  whole. 

One  remark  concerning  multiple  souls  may  be  offered. 
As  has  already  been  suggested  by  the  French  philosopher, 
Levy-Bruhl,  their  precise  number  may  probably  be  correlated 
in  more  than  one  case  with  the  mystic  number  of  the  tribe. 
Since  the  Plains  Indians  constantly  associate  four  with  pe-J 
culiar  potency,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  some  of  them 
bringing  the  souls  into  line  with  their  preconceived  idea. 
All  that  seems  prerequisite  is  that  they  should  first  consider 
the  matter  from  a  numerical  angle  at  all.  As  soon  as  that 
happens  the  favored  number  will  assert  itself  with  the  ob¬ 
trusiveness  of  a  fixed  idea.  Thus  the  Peninsular  Malays^ 
who  value  seven  as  sacred,  are  not  content  with  less  than 
seven  distinct  souls.  Considering  the  arguments  advanced 
in  Galileo’s  day  against  the  possibility  of  more  than  seven 


io6  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

planets,  we  need  not  marvel  at  the  force  of  such  preconcep¬ 
tions. 

To  the  subject  of  non-human  souls  the  briefest  of  refer¬ 
ences  will  suffice.  It  is  not  astonishing  that  animals  should 
be  credited  with  souls,  for  primitive  man  rarely,  if  ever, 
draws  a  sharp  line  of  demarcation  between  mankind  and 
other  animals  as  a  group,  though  there  may  be  a  capricious 
favoritism  'in  ascribing  a  soul  to  some  species  and  not  to 
others.  What  at  first  sight  arrests  our  attention  is  that 
even  the  lifeless  phenomena  of  nature  are  sometimes  con¬ 
ceived  as  endowed  with  a  spirit.  We  have  already  seen 
that  when  a  Bukaua  makes  sacrifice  it  is  not  the  food  itself 
that  is  supposed  to  be ,  appropriated  by  the  spirits  but  the 
spiritual  essence  of  the  offering,  and  this  is  a  far  from  un¬ 
common  practice.  To  cite  another  case,  the  Bagobo  as¬ 
cribe  a  soul — a  single  one,  incidentally — to  such  manufac¬ 
tured  things  as  tools,  weapons,  and  clothing.9 

,Tylor s  Theory:  The  Origin  of  the  Spirit  Concept 

Having  briefly  surveyed  some  of  the  facts  of  animism 
we  are  now  ready  to  examine  Tylor’s  theory  of  them.  His 
scheme  naturally  divides  itself  into  two  parts.  First,  he 
determines  how  the  concept  of  comparatively  spiritual  as 
opposed  to  grossly  material  existence  could  ever  have  arisen ; 
secondly,  he  attempts  to  show  how  when  that  concept  had 
once  evolved  all  types  of  supernatural  beings  evolved  from 
it.  Each  inquiry  is  best  considered  separately. 

According  to  Tylor,  the  belief  in  a  more  refined  form  of 
existence  than  the  bodily  one  of  normal  experience  is  based 
both  on  an  inference  from  observed  facts  and  on  the  direct 
evidence  of  the  senses.  Primitive  man  observes  that  there 
is  a  difference  between  the  living  body  and  the  corpse,  and 


ANIMISM 


107 


he  concludes  that  there  must  be  something  in  the  former, 
however  elusive  in  essence,  that  is  absent  from  the  latter; 
hence,  the  notion  of  a  vital  principle.  But,  secondly,  the 
savage  sees ,  either  in  dreams  or  in  visionary  revelations, 
human  shapes  different  from  those  of  waking  experience. 
“When  the  sleeper  awakens  from  a  dream,  he  believes  he 
has  really  somehow  been  away,  or  that  other  people  have 
come  to  him.”  But  since  his  body  lies  where  he  lay  down  to 
rest,  since  the  people  he  sees  are  known  to  be  far  away,  it 
is  necessarily  not  his  normal  self  or  the  selves  of  his  dream 
interlocutors  that  are  concerned,  but  phantom  selves  present¬ 
ing  a  new  category  of  reality,  though  bearing  the  semblance 
of  the  fleshly  body.  Says  Tylor: 

♦  * . 

My  own  view  is  that  nothing  but  dreams  or  visions  could 
have  ever  put  into  men’s  minds  such  an  idea  as  that  of  souls 
being  ethereal  images  of  bodies. 

But  the  vital  force  and  the  phantom  are  intimately  con¬ 
nected  with  the  body,  the  former  enabling  it  to  feel,  think, 
and  act,  while  the  latter  is  its  image  or  double.  Further, 
both  are  separable  from  the  body,— the  life  principle  dur¬ 
ing  insensibility  or  death,  the  double  when  it  appears  to 
people  at  a  distance.  Tylor  argues  that  primitive  man  com¬ 
bines  the  two  into  the  notion  of  a  ghost-soul. 

Given  the  human  soul,  the  extension  of  the  soul  concept 
to  other  animals  was  natural  considering  the  primitive  view 
of  animals  as  not  basically  distinct  from  man.  As  for  the 
souls  attributed  to  inanimate  objects,  Tylor  points  out  that 
even  they  may  be  regarded  as  endowed  with  life,  while  in 
any  event  they  will  appear  as  phantoms  in  dreams  and 
visions  alongside^of  persons  wearing,  carrying,  or  otherwise 
using  them.10 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


108 

Let  us  understand  clearly  the  relations  of  Tylor’s  theory 
to  the  phenomena  to  which  it  pertains.  That  even  extremely 
rude  tribes  believe  in  the  existence  of  a  spiritual,  that  is, 
relatively  immaterial,  reality,  is  the  starting-point  of  the 
inquiry.  Whence,  asks  Tylor,  do  they  derive  this  belief, 
which  is  apparently  not  suggested  by  experience?  His 
answer  is  that  the  lack  of  an  empirical  basis  is  only  appar¬ 
ent;  and  he  cites  two  sets  of  phenomena  that  conjointly  may 
have  led  to  the  notion  of  spirit  as  here  defined.  He  does 
not  pretend  to  have  historical  records  for  the  origin  of  a 
conception  that  belongs  to  dim  antiquity.  His  theory  is 
avowedly  a  psychological  interpretation  pure  and  simple, 
but  inasmuch  as  it  not  only  explains  the  empirical  observa¬ 
tions,  but  operates  exclusively  with  facts  like  death,  dreams 
and  visions,  all  of  which  demonstrably  exercise  a  strong  in¬ 
fluence  on  the  minds  of  primitive  men,  it  must  be  conceded 
to  have  a  high  degree  of  probability.  I,  for  one,  certainly 
have  never  encountered  any  rival  hypothesis  that  could  be 
considered  a  serious  competitor.  However,  the  eminent 
French  sociologist  Durkheim  has  raised  objections  to  Tylor’s 
theory,  and  it  will  accordingly  be  necessary  to  examine  his 
arguments.11 

One  criticism  offered  by  Durkheim  seems  to  coincide  with 
what  I  have  myself  said  in  the  Introduction  concerning 
Tylor’s  intellectualistic  bias.  Why,  asks  the  French  scholar, 
should  primitive  man  crave  a  theoretical  interpretation  of 
dream  life?  He  is  not  a  philosopher  who  deliberately  con¬ 
cocts  theories  of  the  phenomena  observed. 

Now  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  Tylor’s  phraseology  is 
often  tinctured  with  rationalistic  psychologizing.  But 
Durkheim  does  not  put  his  finger  on  the  right  spot.  Tylor 
is  at  fault  in  so  far  as  he  limits  the  consideration  of  religion 
almost  wholly  to  the  belief  in  spiritual  beings,  that  is  to  the 


ANIMISM 


109 

conceptual  aspect  of  religion  without  due  regard  to  its  emo-^ 
tional  concomitants.  But  in  the  present  context  the  charge 
of  intellectualism  is  pointless  because  Tylor  is  concerned 
with  tracing  the  origin  of  a  concept,  that  is,  of  a  cognitive 
element  of  consciousness.  Further,  he  derives  it  very 
largely  not  from  ratiocination  about  observed  phenomena 
but  from  the  immediate  sensory  testimony  of  dream  life. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Tylor’s  errors  in  the  way  of  intel¬ 
lectualism  are  the  veriest  peccadilloes  beside  his  critic’s. 
For  Durkheim’s  remarks  in  part  i n vol ve-a.n-i.nt.rJ  1  ectualistic 
notion  of  the  savage  that  is  well-nigh  incredible.  How,  he 
asks,  could  a  dreamer  fail  to  discover  that  he  has  been  the 
dupe  of  an  illusion?  Say,  he  has  been  disporting  himself 
in  his  sleep  with  some  fellow-tribesman;  all  he  has  to  do 
on  awakening  is  to  compare  notes  with  his  friend.  Has  he 
undergone  similar  experiences  ?  In  most  instances  there 
will  be  discrepancies,  hence  no  reality  will  be  attached  to  the 
adventures  of  dream  life. 

This  is  almost  beneath  criticism.  In  the  first  place,  the 
persons  seen  in  sleep  are  not  always  so  close  at  hand  as  to 
be  readily  interviewed  about  the  precise  simultaneity  of 
their  dream  experiences.  Secondly,  what  evidence  is  there 
that  primitive  men  would  naturally  resort  to  such  a  check¬ 
ing  process?  From  what  we  know  it  would  ^appear  that  in 
proportion  as  they  attached  emotional  value  to  their  dreams 
they  would  be  reticent  concerning  them.  But,  waiving  that 
point,  let  us  suppose  that  our  inquirer  categorically  con¬ 
fronts  a  camp-mate  with  a  tale  of  joint  nocturnal  wander¬ 
ings.  Which  one  of  us  is  able  tO'  recall  with  complete 
sharpness  all  the  varied  details  of  a  night’s  dreams?  How, 
then,  could  the  person  consulted  be  sufficiently  certain  of 
the  facts  to  make  a  categorical  denial  ?  His  reactions,  when 
he  is  so  confronted,  would  certainly  depend  solely  on  his 


no 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


inborn  suggestibility  and  his  psychological  relations  to  the 
questioner.  They  would  correspond,  in  some  cases  at  least, 
to  the  response  given  under  comparable  conditions,  already 
mentioned,  when  a  Hawaiian  priest  would  announce  to  some 
native  that  he  had  seen  the  latter’s  wraith  misbehaving  him¬ 
self,  that  such  conduct  had  aroused  the  anger  of  his  familiar, 
and  would  result  in  dire  consequences  unless  a  rite  of  atone¬ 
ment  were  undergone. 

At  this  speech  of  the  kahuna  kilokilo  [priest] ,  the  man  whose 
soul  was  concerned  became  greatly  alarmed  and  cast  down  in 
spirit,  and  he  consented  to  have  the  kahuna  perform  the  cere¬ 
mony  of  kala,  atonement,  for  him.12 

Other  arguments  advanced  by  Durkheim  suffer  from  the 
same  combination  of  arbitrary  assertions  and  rationalistic 
psychologizing  and,  above  all,  from  a  misunderstanding  of 
the  question  at  issue.  We  are  told  that  Tylor  simplifies 
the  problem  by  representing  the  soul  merely  as  a  separable 
double ;  to  be  sure,  it  may  be  so  conceived,  but  it  also  figures 
as  something  not  radically  separable,  as  something  fusing 
with  the  organism  it  animates,  so  as  to  be  affected  by  bodily 
wounds.  Tylor,  then,  fails  to  explain  why  the  dualism  of 
soul  and  body  does  not  exclude  a  profound  unity  and  an  in¬ 
timate  interpenetration  of  the  two. 

The  obvious  answer  is  that  that  is  beside  the  problem ;  the 
problem  is  not  why  primitive  man  does  not  attain  a  logical 
consistency  rarely  encountered  among  learned  metaphysi¬ 
cians,  but  how  the  empirically  observed  notion  of  relatively 
spiritual  being  came  into  existence.  Whether  that  notion 
solely  dominates  the  view  of  mental  operations,  or  is  coupled 
with  contradictory  notions,  is  irrelevant.  Specifically,  the 
transmission  of  a  wound  from  the  body  to  the  soul  is  wholly 


ANIMISM 


hi 


intelligible  from  Tylor’s  scheme  whenever  the  soul  is  repre¬ 
sented  as  an  image  reflected  by  the  body. 

Again  Durkheim  contends  that  dream  phenomena  are  not 
most  simply  explained  by  the  assumption  of  a  double ;  for 
example,  it  would  have  been  simpler  for  a  dreamer  to  imag¬ 
ine  himself  endowed  with  telescopic  vision  when  he  sees 
remote  regions  in  his  sleep.  That  would  make  lesser  de¬ 
mands  on  the  imagination  than  “cette  notion  si  complexe 
d’un  double,  fait  d’une  substance  etheree,  a  demi  invisible,  et 
dont  l’experience  directe  n’offrait  aucun  exemple.” 

Let  us  remark  again  that  the  question  is  not  to  show 
how  the  savage  might  in  simple  fashion  explain  his  dream 
life  but  how  the  empirically  noted  idea  of  a  double  could 
arise.  Durkheim  misses  the  point  of  departure  for  Tylor  s 
investigation  by  thus  inverting  the  problem.  Further,  the 
assertion  that  telescopic  vision  is  simpler  than  the  double¬ 
concept  is  at  best  an  idle  conjecture.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
there  is  nothing  complex  about  this  notion,  which  is  ac¬ 
cording  to  Tylor  directly  yielded  by  the  sensory  experience 
of  dreams  and  abnormal  mental  states.  Finally,  how  would 
telescopic  vision  explain  those  cases  in  which  the  dreamer 
does  not  observe  remote  happenings  but  is  visited  in  his 
own  habitat  by  persons  known  to  be  far  away  ? 

Durkheim  is  not  more  fortunate  when  he  argues  that 
our  dreams  very  often  relate  to  past  experiences,  that  we 
survey  once  more  what  we  have  already  seen,  do  again  what 
we  have  done.  All  this,  he  insists,  cannot  be  explained  by 
the  double;  even  if  that  were  capable  of  traveling  in  space, 
no  human  being,  however  devoid  of  intelligence,  could  in¬ 
vest  it  with  the  power  of  traveling  in  time.  It  is  much 
simpler  for  early  man  to  regard  such  dreams  as  what  they 
are,  namely,  as  particularly  vivid  recollections  of  the  past. 

But  again  we  must  insist  that  a  theory  which  purports 


112 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


to  derive  the  soul-concept — partly,  it  should  be  noted — 
from  dream  life  is  under  no  obligations  to  outline  a  savage 
theory  that  shall  consistently  explain  all  dream  experiences. 
When  the  theory  has  explained  how  some  of  the  ordinary 
dream  phenomena  yield  the  notion  of  a  double,  it  has 
achieved  all  that  can  reasonably  be  expected.  The  very  as¬ 
sumption  that  primitive  man  must  be  credited  with  a  con¬ 
sistent  scheme  of  things  reveals  a  strange  lack  of  insight 
into  his  mental  operations.  Apart  from  this,  it  would  be 
interesting  to  know  whence  Durkheim  derives  the  informa¬ 
tion  about  the  relative  frequency  of  dreams  that  must  nec¬ 
essarily  be  referred  to  the  past. 

Finally,  a  chronological  stricture  cannot  be  ignored. 
Durkheim  is  willing  to  grant  that  nowadays  the  savage  uses 
the  concept  of  the  double  to  account  for  dream  apparitions; 
but  he  maintains  that  this  represents  a  later  stage  of  devel¬ 
opment.  Primitive  man,  he  argues,  does  not  explain  all 
dreams  alike,  but  disregards  the  majority  of  them;  he  pays 
attention  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  sanctified  by  a  pre¬ 
existing  religious  system.  The  Australians,  in  particular, 
neglected  dreams  unless  they  exhibited  souls  of  the  deceased: 
the  soul-concept  thus  precedes  and  underlies  the  conception 
of  dream  experiences  and  cannot  be  derived  therefrom. 

In  answer  to  this,  we  may  note  once  more,  in  passing,  the 
inversion  of  the  real  problem  and  the  one-sided  emphasis 
on  dream  life,  which  Tylor  considers  only  one,  though  a 
very  important,  source  of  the  spirit-concept.  For  reasons 
to  be  explained  below,  we  cannot  accept  Durkheim’s  bland 
assumption  that  Australian  usage,  even  if  correctly  reported, 
is  decisive  as  to  primitive,  let  alone  primeval,  belief.  But 
even  if  it  were,  what  is  meant  by  “ignoring”  dream  ex¬ 
periences  ?  It  would  be  entirely  possible  not  to  weight  them 
emotionally  yet  to  apprehend  them  intellectually.  As  a 


ANIMISM 


113 

matter  of  fact,  it  is  improbable  that  repeated  nocturnal  ap¬ 
paritions  in  sleep  should  fail  in  the  long  run  to  yield  evi¬ 
dence  of  a  relatively  immaterial  form  of  reality,  and  that  is 
all  that  is  required  by  the  theory.  The  point  that  there  is 
discrimination  exercised  as  to  the  value  of  different  dreams 
is  valid  enough  but  irrelevant.  Incidentally,  I  suspect  that 
in  a  good  many  instances  the  appraisal  of  a  dream  has  a 
purely  subjective  basis,  that  it  is  due  to  a  simple  thrill  which 
carries  with  it  immediate  conviction. 

To  sum  up,  Durkheim’s  objections  leave  Tylor’s  explana¬ 
tion  entirely  unshaken.  Certainly  the  alternative  proposed 
by  the  critic  cannot  be  regarded  as  an  adequate  substitute, 
Durkheim  assumes  that  the  most  archaic  religious  concep¬ 
tions  are  those  found  in  Australia.  Typical  of  the  island 
continent  is  the  belief  that  each  sib  (clan)  in  the  tribe  has 
peculiarly  intimate  relations  with  a  species  of  animals  or 
plants, — its  “totem.”  Diffused  throughout  the  sacred 
species  there  is  an  anonymous  force.  But  the  individual 
Australian  is  himself  a  part  and  parcel  of  the  group  that 
comprehends  alike  his  sib  and  his  totem  species  *.  the  totemic 
principle  is  incarnate  in  him  as  his  soul,  which  is  really 
only  part  of  the  collective  totemic  soul.  Since,  nevertheless, 
each  individual  is  distinct  from  animals  or  plants,  the  no¬ 
tion  of  a  dual  form  of  existence  naturally  arises. 

Since  this  is  not  a  treatise  on  dialectics,  it  is  unnecessary 
to  examine  the  numerous  allegations  bound  up  with  Durk¬ 
heim’s  scheme,  together  with  their  logical  ramifications. 
We  shall  content  ourselves  with  putting  the  ax  to  the  root 
of  the  theory.  It  is  ethnographically  unwarranted  to  deduce 
primeval  conceptions  from  Australian  conditions.  The 
Australians  are  not  so  primitive  as,  certainly  not  more  primi¬ 
tive  in  their  culture  than,  the  Andaman  Islanders,  the  Se- 
mang  of  the  Malay  Peninsula,  the  Paviotso'  of  Nevada.  In 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


1 14 

these  sociologically  simplest  tribes  totemism  does  not  occur. 
Totemism  is  a  widespread  but  far  from  universal  phe¬ 
nomenon,  while  the  belief  in  spiritual  beings  is  universal; 
precisely  these  rudest  tribes  which  have  a  decisive  bearing 
on  the  question  are  non-totemic  animists.  Hence,  the  no¬ 
tion  of  spirit  cannot  be  derived  from  totemism.  Moreover, 
the  totemic  ideas  of  the  Australians  represent  a  highly  local¬ 
ized  product  and  cannot  even  be  accepted  as  the  earliest 
form  of  totemism. 

Durkheim’s  argumentation  may  therefore  be  dismissed  as 
in  no  way  invalidating  the  core  of  Tylor’s  hypothesis  in 
the  absence  of  historical  evidence. 

Quite  recently  an  objection  to  Tylor’s  theory  has  come 
from  another  quarter.  An  eminent  anatomist,  Professor 
G.  Elliot  Smith,  has  broached  the  view  and  impressed  it 
on  the  minds  of  several  students  of  cultural  anthro¬ 
pology,  that  animism  is  not  a  product  of  the  primitive  mind 
at  all  but  was  transmitted  to  the  ruder  peoples  of  the  world 
from  Egypt  since,  say,  2600  b.c.  Thus  Mr.  Perry,  a  dis¬ 
ciple  of  this  school,  does  not  hesitate  to  pronounce  it  as 
probable  that 

prior  to  the  coming  of  this  (Egyptian)  civilization,  the  native 
peoples  were  devoid  of  any  magical  or  religious  practices  or 
ideas.13 

The  historical  evidence  adduced  to  support  this  inference 
seems  to  me  to  be  precisely  nil.  The  conclusion  is  based 
partly  on  an  irrational  pan-Egyptological  bias  that  impels 
members  of  the  school  to  trace  practically  all  arts  and  be¬ 
liefs  to  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  partly  on  the  dogma  that 
it  is  a  psychological  impossibility  for  any  belief,  custom, 
or  art  to  be  re-invented  independently.  Even  were  this 


ANIMISM 


H5 

psychological  principle  fully  demonstrated,  the  Egyptian 
origin  of  animism,  or  of  anything  else,  would  not  follow  as 
a  logical  corollary;  for  it  is  entirely  conceivable  that  the 
beliefs  shared  by  the  ancient  Egyptians  with  the  modern 
Australians  or  Andamanese  are  in  all  three  instances  sur¬ 
vivals  of  an  extremely  ancient  and  deep-rooted  human  set 
of  ideas.  That  is,  of  course,  the  implication  of  Tylor’s 
theory.  Tylor,  disavowing  historical  knowledge,  has  shown 
to  my  mind  a  satisfactory  correspondence  between  the  primi¬ 
tive  concept  of  spirit  and  certain  psychological  phenomena, 
known  to  occur  among  primitive  folk,  that  would  produce 
that  concept.  I,  for  one,  shall  not  be  bulldozed  into  the  con¬ 
viction  that  it  was  psychologically  impossible  for  primitive 
man  to  arrive  at  animistic  ideas  before  the  ancient  Egyptians 
are  proved  to  have  had  a  unique  innate  mentality  that  would 
enable  them  alone,  of  all  hominids,  to  evolve  the  spirit- 
concept. 

Tylor’s  Theory:  Nature  and  Sequence  of  Super¬ 
natural  Beings 

Tylor  represented  in  admirable  fashion  the  characteristics 
of  the  English  intellect.  Fine-spun  dialectics  and  their  elab¬ 
orate  speculative  products  were  little  to  his  taste.  He 
reveled  in  facts,  burying  his  arguments  and  his  readers  under 
their  solid  array,  and  approached  his  problems  with  a  punc¬ 
tiliously  judicial  frame  of  mind.  But  even  the  most  cauti¬ 
ous  and  open-minded  are  not  immune  to  the  subtler  influ¬ 
ences  of  their  intellectual  atmosphere,  and  so  Tylor,  the 
compeer  and  comrade-at-arms  of  Darwin  and  Huxley, 
could  not  but  insensibly  transfer  to  his  field  of  inquiry  the 
basic  principles  of  biological  evolution  that  were  then  being 
rapidly  extended  to  every  branch  of  learning.  The  biolo- 


n6 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


gists  were  asserting  that  an  essential  unity  underlay  the  ap¬ 
parent  diversity  of  organic  life;  and  for  the  student  of  com¬ 
parative  religion  it  was  a  tempting  conclusion  that  the 
varied  forms  of  religious  belief  were  likewise  linked  by  a 
fundamental  likeness.  Zoologists  were  passing  from  the 
general  proposition  that  species  hitherto  regarded  as  dis¬ 
tinct  were  related  by  blood  to  the  elaboration  of  family 
trees ;  and  the  anthropological  investigator  of  religion  spon¬ 
taneously  followed  suit  and,  naturally  enough,  regarded  it 
as  a  foregone  conclusion  that  as  man  had  been  derived 
from  a  unicellular  ancestor  so  the  beliefs  of  the  most  highly 
civilized  peoples  had  evolved  by  a  corresponding  series  of 
progressive  changes  from  the  faith  of  the  tribes  lowest  in 
cultural  rank.  In  other  words,  when  Tylor  had  answered 
the  question  how  humanity  ever  came  to  conceive  such  a 
thing  as  spirit  at  all,  and  next  confronted  the  varied  mani¬ 
festations  of  belief  in  supernatural  beings,  he  automatically 
attempted  to  bring  order  into  the  welter  of  facts  by  a  theory 
monistic  in  its  psychology  and  unilinear  in  its  historical  im¬ 
plications.  As  to  the  psychological  interpretation,  indeed, 
nothing  could  be  more  explicit : 

It  seems  as  though  the  conception  of  a  human  soul  when  once 
attained  to  by  man,  served  as  a  type  or  model  on  which  he 
framed  not  only  his  ideas  of  other  souls  of  lower  grade,  but 
also  his  ideas  of  spiritual  beings  in  general,  from  the  tiniest  elf 
that  sports  in  the  long  grass  up  to  the  heavenly  Creator  and 
Ruler  of  the  world,  the  Great  Spirit. 

And  again  we  read : 

The  idea  of  souls,  demons,  deities,  and  any  other  classes  of 
spiritual  beings,  are  conceptions  of  similar  nature  throughout, 
the  conceptions  of  souls  being  the  original  ones  of  the  series.14 


ANIMISM 


ii  7 

In  part  the  argument  on  behalf  of  this  basic  unity  is  quite 
convincing.  It  is  easy  to  understand  how  the  souls  of  the 
living,  postulated  for  reasons  set  forth  in  the  first  part  of 
Tylor’s  scheme,  should  assume  the  character  of  malignant 
demons  or  of  benign  patrons  after  the  death  of  the  bodyJA 
There  is  also  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  the  interpretation 
of  what  Tylor  calls  “fetichism” :  as  the  human  soul  can  ex¬ 
ist  in  the  human  body  or  leave  it  in  dream  life  and  abnormal 
states,  so  spirits  modeled  on  the  soul  may  either  flit  about 
freely  or  become  temporarily  housed  in  material  bodies, 
which  through  this  incorporation  become  sacred  objects  or 
“fetiches.”  16  But  here  a  difficulty  arises  that  is  indeed  ex¬ 
plicitly  expounded  by  Tylor.  Plausible  as  this  interpreta¬ 
tion  may  be,  have  we  the  right  to  assume  that  sacred  ob¬ 
jects  always  derive  their  mystic  character  from  spirits  em¬ 
bodied  in  them?  We  have  not,  Tylor  candidly  explains; 
but  his  monistic  bias  is  too  strong  to  be  seriously  shaken 
by  the  caution  felt  and  expressed  in  abstracto .  That  is  to 
say,  what  he  is  really  interested  in  demonstrating  is  the 
omnipotence  of  the  animistic  principle  not  only  as  an  ex¬ 
planation  of  all  spiritual  beings  but  of  all  objects  whatsoever 
that  possess  religious  value.  Hence  these  are  brought 
so  far  as  possible  into  the  animistic  category.  Yet  there  is 
now  considerable  evidence  that  precisely  in  some  of  the 
regions  where  fetichism  flourishes  most,  viz.,  in  West  Africa, 
the  power  of  the  fetich  is  derived  not  from  an  embodied 
spirit  but  from,  say,  some  magical  substance  that  is  smeared 
over  it  and  is  inherently  endowed  with  supernatural  po¬ 
tency. 

Doubts  likewise  arise  as  to  the  alleged  identity  of  nature- 
spirits  with  human  souls.  “As  the  human  body  was  held 
to  live  and  act  by  virtue  of  its  own  inhabiting  spirit-soul, 
the  argument  runs,  “so  the  operations  of  the  world  seem  to 


1 18 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


be  carried  on  by  the  influence  of  other  spirits.”  There  is  an 
infinite  multitude  of  spiritual  beings  in  primitive  belief  to 
serve  as  causes  of  natural  phenomena:  “these  spirits  are 
looked  upon  as  souls  working  nature  much  as  human  souls 
work  human  bodies.”  Thus,  the  firmament  is  explained 
“by  an  indwelling  deity,  modeled  on  the  human  soul.  We 
may  best  understand  what  was  meant  by  the  Heaven-god, 
if  we  think  of  him  as  the  soul  of  the  sky.”  At  first  the 
spirits  are  merged  in  their  element,  later  as  anthropomorphic 
gods  they  are  independent  controllers  of  the  phenomenon. 
Thus,  the  barbarian’s  fire-worship  is  at  first  directed  to  the 
spirit  supposed  to  be  animating  “the  actual  flame  which  he 
watches  writhing,  roaring,  devouring  like  a  live  animal,” 
but  at  a  subsequent  stage  any  particular  fire  is  a  manifesta¬ 
tion  of  a  general  elemental  being,  the  fire-god.  Similarly, 
the  sea  divinity  of  the  older  period  evolves  into  Poseidon 
“so  little  bound  to  the  element  he  governs,  that  he  can 
come  from  the  brine  to  sit  in  the  midst  of  the  gods  in  the 
assembly  on  Olympus,  and  ask  the  will  of  Zeus.”  17 

Undoubtedly  the  facts  can  be  consistently  explained  along 
these  lines.  But  if  we  ask  whether  Tylor  has  demonstrated 
his  interpretative  principle  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others, 
it  must  be  said  that  no  such  rigid  proof  is  to  be  found.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  data  will  be  seen  below  to  admit  in  part 
of  a  simpler  explanation. 

Turning  from  the  psychological  to  the  chronological  as¬ 
pects  of  Tylor’s  scheme,  I  must  confess  that  it  is  not  in  all 
details  perfectly  clear  to  me,  for  the  overwhelming  mass  of 
concrete  illustrations  is  leavened  by  a  minimum  of  logical 
correlation.  Thus  I  am  not  sure  whether  fetichism  is  con¬ 
ceived  as  a  definite  stage  succeeding  ancestral  cults  and 
antedating  nature- worship ;  or  whether  it  is  merely  con¬ 
sidered  an  outgrowth  of  the  basic  soul-concept,  such  as 


ANIMISM 


119 

might  appear  in  any  and  every  period  after  the  initial  estab¬ 
lishment  of  the  spirit  idea.  Two  facts,  however,  are  quite 
beyond  the  possibility  of  doubt:  according  to  the  theory,  the 
soul  concept  is  the  earliest  because  it  is  “based  on  evidence 
most  direct  and  accessible  to  ancient  man” ;  and  a  belief  in 
a  Supreme  Being  is  the  last  in  the  series,  arising  from  a 
preceding  polytheism  through  the  ascendancy  of  one  deity, 
— presumably  on  the  pattern  of  the  earthly  supremacy  of 
the  chief  or  king.18  Moreover,  when  such  a  belief  is 
reported  for  primitive  peoples,  Tylor  is  strongly  inclined  to 
scent  the  influence  of  contact  with  higher  cultures,  those  of 
Christianity  and  Islam. 

In  the  interests  of  the  reader  I  have  seen  fit  to  punctuate 
my  exposition  with  an  occasional  anticipatory  query.  How¬ 
ever,  for  a  long  time  after  its  appearance  Tylor’s  theory 
remained  unquestioned  in  anthropological  circles.  Its  con¬ 
sonance  with  the  thought  of  the  period,  the  wealth  of  its 
documentation,  Tylor’s  well-earned  reputation  as  a  leader 
of  the  new  science,  all  served  to  silence  dissent.  When,  in¬ 
deed,  doubts  were  at  last  voiced,  they  did  not  issue  from  the 
ranks  of  the  academic  guild. 

Andrew  Lang,  who  in  1898  ventured  to  challenge  one  of 
the  most  impressive  parts  of  Tylor’s  scheme,  was  indeed 
very  much  more  than  a  mere  amateur.  Though  a  profes¬ 
sional  man  of  letters  with  primarily  literary  interests,  he 
was  widely  read  in  folklore  and  related  fields  of  anthropol¬ 
ogy.  He  serves  as  an  illustration  of  the  fact  that  at  a 
certain  stage  in  its  development  a  branch  of  knowledge  may 
well  profit  from  the  labors  of  a  nimble-witted  outsider. 
Precisely  because  Lang  stood  aside  from  the  intellectual 
currents  that  could  not  but  affect  a  man  like  Tylor,  he  was 
able  to  preserve  a  greater  freshness  of  outlook.  He  was 
not  interested  in  natural  science  and  the  catchword  “evolu- 


120  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

tion”  that  held  many  of  his  contemporaries  spellbound  did 
not  accordingly  stir  his  imagination  at  all.  However,  it 
would  not  be  just  to  ascribe  his  attitude  wholly,  or  even  pre¬ 
dominantly,  to  mere  aloofness  from  the  -contemporaneous 
philosophy  of  natural  science.  Lang  belonged  to  that  rare 
company  of  men  who  do  not  readily  bow  to  the  mere  au¬ 
thority  of  learning.  He  displayed  a  certain  mental  .affinity 
with  writers  like  George  Bernard  Shaw  or,  to  take  academic 
men,  like  William  James  and  Gustav  Theodor  Fechner.  So 
far  from  being  cowed  by  the  pronunciamento  of  an  acknowl¬ 
edged  master,  the  very  idea  exerted  upon  him  a  contra- 
suggestive  influence.  With  specific  reference  to  Tylor, 
Lang  felt  and  expressed  the  admiration  common  to  every¬ 
one  who  could  appreciate  vast  knowledge  coupled  with  sound 
judgment ;  but  he  was  not  hypnotized  into  blind  acceptance 
of  Tylor’s  theory  and  preferred  to  draw  conclusions  on  the 
basis  of  a  personal  scrutiny  of  the  data. 

I  have  pointed  out  that  what  were  foregone  conclusions 
for  Tylor  would  necessarily  appear  to  Lang  as  highly  dubi¬ 
ous  propositions.  Why  must  all  notions  of  supernatural 
beings  be  ranged  in  a  unilinear  series?  Why  must  loftier 
conceptions  of  the  deity  grow  out  of  less  worthy  ones? 
History,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  seemed  to  demonstrate  that 
gods  do  not  always  improve  ethically  with  advancing  cul¬ 
ture.  Why,  then,  could  not  the  conception  of  a  “high-god” 
be  held  by  the  very  simplest  tribes, — a  god,  that  is  to  say, 
who  could  be  described  as  a  “primeval  eternal  Being,  author 
of  all  things,  the  father  and  friend  of  man,  the  invisible, 
omniscient  guardian  of  morality”?  Lang  contended  that 
such  a  notion  of  divinity  actually  existed  among  a  number 
of  rude  peoples  and  that  it  was  not  introduced  by  white  mis¬ 
sionaries,  or  that  at  least  such  alien  influences  were  highly 
improbable.  He  was  by  no  means  disposed  to  challenge 


ANIMISM 


12 1 


Tylor’s  scheme  in  toto.  He  had  no  particular  quarrel  with 
Tylor’s  derivation  of  the  spirit-concept  and  freely  admitted 
that  the  cult  of  demons  and  ancestral  spirits  naturally 
flowed  from  the  idea  of  the  soul.  What  he  denied  was 
that  it  ever  culminated  in  the  conception  of  a  high-god. 
Referring  to  Tylor’s  suggestion  that  it  had  arisen  out  of 
ancestor-worship  and  on  the  pattern  of  earthly  royalty,  he 
pointedly  asked  how  such  a  process  was  possible  among 
those  peoples  who  did  not  worship  their  ancestors  and  who 
were  not  governed  by  kings.  He  thus  arrived  at  the  theory 
that  the  high-god  faith  represented  a  line  of  development 
radically  independent  of  that  which  held  for  the  soul-ghost 
idea.  But,  though  radically  distinct,  that  faith  did  not  re¬ 
main  so.  The  high-god  was  conceived  as  sublime  in  such 
measure  as  to  be  removed  from  direct  relations  with  human 
needs  and  received  neither  prayer  nor  offerings ;  these  would 
be  rendered  instead  to  the  ghosts  of  the  deceased,  who  thus 
came  to  occupy  in  increasing  degree  the  center  of  the  re¬ 
ligious  stage  and  arrogated  to  themselves  all  cult  activities. 
In  addition,  the  myth-making  tendency  would  come  to  over¬ 
lay  the  originally  sublime  character  of  the  high-god  with 
human  and  even  contemptible  traits.  Thus,  the  Creator  of 
primeval  days  would  secondarily  fuse  with  the  idea  of  an  an¬ 
cestor  and  might  assume  the  mutually  contradictory  charac¬ 
teristics  of  a  hero  and  a  trickster.  This,  for  example,  is 
supposed  to  have  happened  among  the  Zulu:  in  the  begin¬ 
ning  the  Unkulunkulu  of  their  mythology  was,  according  to 
Lang,  a  typical  high-god,  but  the  intense  development  of 
ancestor-worship  led  to  his  identification  with  the  first  man, 
while  the  myth-making  fancy  of  the  natives  made  him  the 
hero  of  adventures  hardly  consistent  with  a  monotheistic 
divinity  in  our  sense. 

But  the  chronological  aspect  of  Lang’s  theory  is  at  least 


1 22 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


equaled  in  interest  by  its  psychological  complement.  Lang 
denies  flatly  that  the  high-god  of  primitive  tribes  need  be 
a  spiritual,  i.  e.,  soul-like  being. 

To  us,  such  a  being  is  necessarily  a  spirit,  but  he  was  by  no 
means  necessarily  so  to  an  early  thinker,  who  may  not  yet  have 
reached  the  conception  of  a  ghost. 

The  savages  conceived  their  high-gods  as  “undefined  eter¬ 
nal  beings, ”  to  them  the  deity  was  “a  magnified  non-natural 
man,” — one,  in  other  words,  vastly  superior  to  natural  hu¬ 
man  beings  but  not  envisaged  as  resembling  the  shadowy 
double  inhabiting  the  human  body, — a  conception  that  may 
have  been  of  later  origin.  In  answer  to  the  question,  how 
primeval  man  could  evolve  such  a  high-god,  Lang  appeals 
to  the  human  desire  for  an  explanation  of  origins,  which 
would  naturally  stimulate  the  conception  of  a  Maker  or  Cre¬ 
ator.19 

In  the  course  of  my  exposition  of  Tylor,  I  have  already 
hinted  at  a  criticism  of  the  same  nature  as  this  psychological 
one  advanced  by  Lang  but  of  even  broader  application.  If 
it  is  possible  to  doubt  that  the  high-god  is  necessarily  con¬ 
ceived  by  primitive  man  as  spiritual,  the  same  skepticism  is 
surely  permissible  with  regard  to  other  supernatural  beings. 
We  cannot  blame  Tylor  for  striving  to  bring  the  greatest 

possible  number  of  phenomena  under  a  single  formula,  for 

/ 

that  is  the  aim  of  all  science.  But  it  is  the  duty  of  subse¬ 
quent  scholarship  to  test  the  evidence  on  which  the  bold 
generalizers  of  an  earlier  age  based  their  conclusions  and 
to  disclose  whatever  gaps  appear.  Approaching  the  subject 
in  this  temper,  I  find  no  proof  in  Tylor  of  the  assumption 
underlying  his  theory,  that  all  supernatural  beings  are  “spirit¬ 
ual,”  that  is,  modeled  on  the  idea  of  the  human  soul.  It  is. 


ANIMISM 


.123 

of  course,  possible  that,  say,  the  sun-god  is  conceived  as  the 
soul  manipulating  the  solar  body  to  which  it  is  somehow  at¬ 
tached.  But  it  is  at  least  equally  probable  that  the  savage, 
without  splitting  up  the  phenomenon  by  a  dualistic  point  of 
view,  directly  apperceives  it  as  a  person  of  vast  power, — in 
other  words  as  “a  magnified  non-natural  man.”  To  take  an 
actual  case,  among  the  beings  who  bless  the  Crow  Indians 
the  benevolent  Dwarf  plays  a  part,  but  there  is  not  the 
slightest  hint  that  he  is  soul-like :  he  has  all  the  earmarks  of 
robust  non-natural  anthropomorphism,  he  belongs  as  it  were 
to  a  distinct  and  powerful,  though  stunted,  branch  of  the 
family  Hominidae,  localized  near  Pryor  Creek.  For  North 
America  generally,  Dr.  Ruth  Fulton  Benedict  has  proved 
that  the  so-called  guardian  spirits  are  only  in  a  few 
tribes  the  spirits  of  dead  people,  and  even  there  these  never 
constitute  a  majority  of  the  tutelaries  acquired.20  In  this 
area,  in  short,  the  “spirits”  of  descriptive  monographs  are 
not  comparable  to  the  ghosts  of  the  Ekoi  or  Bukaua. 

I  do  not  wish  to  deny  that  it  is  possible  for  the  soul-con¬ 
cept  to  color  the  deities  of  primitive  man  without  their  being 
expressly  identified  with  the  deceased,  but  I  think  more  defi¬ 
nite  indication  of  that  fact  is  required  in  each  instance.  Cer¬ 
tainly,  great  caution  is  obligatory  in  the  use  of  the  term 
“spirit”  and  its  equivalents.  Many  writers  freely  employ  it 
to  designate  any  supernatural  being.  This  may  be  conven¬ 
ient,  but  in  the  interest  of  clarity  such  usage  should  be 
tabooed.  For  example,  Dr.  Radin,  after  defining  Indian  re¬ 
ligion  as  animism  “in  the  old  Tylorian  sense  of  the  term,” 
speaks  of  certain  monsters  as  spirits  generally  distributed 
over  North  America,  and  particularly  of  the  Horned 
Snake.21  Now  Tylor  would  undoubtedly  have  tried  to  bring 
these,  together  with  all  other  supernatural  beings,  under  the 
head  of  “spirits,”  but  always  with  the  explicit  or  implicit 


124  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

understanding  that  they  are  derived  from  the  concept  of 
soul.  Dr.  Radin,  however,  in  no  way  indicates  any  features 
of  the  serpent  that  suggest  such  an  origin,  and  altogether  re¬ 
veals  a  quite  un-Tylorian  indifference  concerning  this  point. 

Some  additional  comments  on  Tylor’s  animistic  interpre¬ 
tation  will  be  offered  below  under  the  heading  of  Anima- 
tism.” 

We  shall  thus  not  merely  recognize  as  valid  Lang’s  ob¬ 
jection  to  the  alleged  psychological  unity  of  high-gods  and 
souls  but  are  willing  to  extend  his  skepticism  to  other  super¬ 
natural  beings.  Let  us  now  revert  to  Lang’s  critique  of  the 
historical  aspects  of  Tylor’s  scheme.  On  this  subject  Lang 
has  found  a  vigorous  adherent  in  the  person  of  Father  Wil¬ 
helm  Schmidt,  the  combative  editor  of  Anthropos,  one  of  the 
keenest  and  most  erudite  writers  in  the  domain  of  anthro- 
^^pQlogy  to-day.  Schmidt  has  independently  developed  and 
systematized  Lang’s  views  while  fitting  them  into  the  total 
scheme  of  culture-history  first  propounded  by  Dr.  F.  Graeb- 
ner.  In  the  modified  form  of  that  system  elaborated  by 
Father  Schmidt  himself,  the  most  archaic  form  of  culture 
accessible  to  inquiry  is  that  common  to  the  rudest  peoples 
of  the  globe,  including  the  Tasmanians,  Bushmen,  Andaman 
Islanders,  Semang  of  the  Malay  Peninsula,  Congo  Pygmies, 
and  a  few  others  of  comparable  grade,  including  some  native 
tribes  of  the  New  World..  All  these  share  the  belief  in  a 
high-god,  the  argument  runs,  hence  Lang’s  contention  of 
the  great  antiquity  of  the  high-god  concept  and  its  contem¬ 
poraneousness  with  the  crudest  culture  stands  confirmed. 

Though  the  basic  assumption  here  made  is  one  that  I  am 
myself  willing  to  accept,  it  obviously  requires  justification, 
for  as  has  been  pointed  out  in  the  Introduction,  ‘  primitive 
and  “primeval”  are  two  distinct  concepts.  To  review  what 
was  explained  there,  even  the  Tasmanians,  however  isolated 


ANIMISM 


125 

and  culturally  stagnant  compared  with  more  progressive  peo¬ 
ples,  were  not  absolutely  stable  in  their  ways  of  life.  They 
have  indeed  been  compared  with  Palaeolithic  man,  but  the 
very  fact  that  they  had  evolved  some  sort  of  adjustment  to 
local  conditions  proves  that  they  had  added  something  to 
whatever  cultural  techniques  they  may  have  brought  with 
them  to  their  new  island  home.  In  other  words,  Tasmanian 
culture,  too,  had  a  history,  and  we  cannot  simply  equate  it 
with  the  culture  of  the  ancestral  immigrants  of  five — or  ten 
— or  twenty — thousand  years  ago.  Now  it  would  be  strange 
indeed  if  what  obtained  for  material  culture  were  wholly  in¬ 
applicable  to  the  field  of  religion.  In  other  words,  the  beliefs 
of  the  Tasmanians  recorded  by  their  observers  cannot  be  set 
down  as  of  Palaeolithic  antiquity  without  further  inquiry. 
And  the  same  skepticism  will  be  in  place  with  the  correspond¬ 
ing  ideas  of  the  Andamanese,  Semang,  and  their  compeers. 

But  fatal  as  the  criticism  may  appear  at  first  blush,  it  can 
be  fairly  answered.  In  the  first  place,  the  tenacity  with 
which  all  religious  beliefs  are  maintained  in  spite  of  the 
superficial  adoption  of  later  creeds  is  notorious.  The  Mo- 
hammedanized  Malay  will  still  in  the  hour  of  need  pray  to 
the  older  gods  of  Hinduism  and,  if  the  worst  comes  to  the 
worst,  fall  back  upon  the  pre-Hindu  deities  of  the  pagan 
pantheon.  So  the  modern  Greek  peasant  along  with  his 
Christian  faith  preserves  fragments  of  belief  that  can  be 
traced  back  for  well  over  two  millennia  into  ancient  Hellas. 

Accordingly,  since  the  force  of  conservatism  is  certainly 
not  less  in  the  rudest  communities  than  among  the  represen¬ 
tatives  of  a  more  sophisticated  civilization,  we  can  fairly 
assume  that  each  of  the  very  simple  peoples  cited  will  pre¬ 
serve  some  archaic  elements.  If,  moreover,  all,  or  most  of 
them,  should  turn  out  to  share  certain  conceptions  of  the 
religious  order,  the  probability  that  these  common  features 


126 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


are  very  old  will  be  considerable.  For  their  likeness  cannot 
be  explained  either  by  mutual  borrowing  or  by  borrowing 
from  a  common  source  since  the  isolation  of  these  groups 
has  been  precisely  one  of  the  most  important  determinants  of 
their  backwardness.  An  alternative  presents  itself :  each 
tribe  in  isolation  may  have  evolved  the  same  idea  through 
the  obscure  workings  of  the  “psychic  unity”  of  mankind. 
But  on  that  principle  it  would  not  be  clear  why  such  unity 
should  have  brought  about  the  high-god  idea  precisely  among 
all  the  simplest  tribes  and  not  in  the  whole  of  the  human 
species.  Finally,  it  might  be  argued  that  though  the  several 
“simplest”  peoples  had  brought  their  common  religious  no¬ 
tions  into  their  present  habitat  this  implies  only  a  moderate 
antiquity  for  these  beliefs  in  so  far  as  the  tribes  in  question 
are  racially  akin  to  one  another.  This  contention  might  in¬ 
deed  be  properly  advanced  against  ascribing  great  age  to  fea¬ 
tures  common  to  the  Andamanese  and  the  Semang,  both  of 
whom  are  of  Negrito  stock  and  have  presumably  separated 
in  relatively  recent  times.  But  even  the  Bushmen,  though 
sometimes  classified  with  the  Negrito,  represent  so  special¬ 
ized  a  physical  type  as  to  demand  a  considerable  period  of 
time  for  their  development;  and  the  Tasmanians,  while 
Negroid,  are  definitely  not  in  the  Negrito  family.  Hence, 
any  religious  traits  held  by  these  Negroid  groups  prior  to 
their  specialization  must  be  of  hoary  age;  and  if  these  fea¬ 
tures  are  common  to  them  and  the  rudest  American  aborig¬ 
ines,  we  are  indeed  carried  back  to  as  early  a  period  of 
human  belief  as  we  can  reasonably  expect  to  attain  by  means 
of  an  historical  reconstruction. 

In  short,  on  the  score  of  logic  I  have  no  objections  to 
Father  Schmidt’s  premises :  if,  nevertheless,  I  demur  to  his 
conclusions  it  is  on  the  score  of  facts.  In  other  words,  if' 
all  the  rudest  peoples  share  a  distinctive  high-god  religion, 


ANIMISM 


127 


then  it  represents  an  element  of  archaic  culture;  but  do  they? 

At  this  point  it  will  be  useful  to  outline  somewhat  more 
fully  Father  Schmidt’s  conception  of  that  cult  as  sketched  by 
one  of  his  associates  and  disciples.22  The  high-god  is  sup¬ 
posed  to  live  in  the  sky  and  is  not  clearly  soul-like.  He  is, 
however,  eternal,  omniscient,  omnipotent  without  ever  abus¬ 
ing  his  power.  He  acts  as  the  founder  of  moral  law,  re¬ 
wards  the  good  and  punishes  the  wicked  by  disease  and 
death,  nay,  even  in  a  hereafter.  He  is  asexual,  and  such 
anthropomorphic  traits  as  are  ascribed  to  him  result  from 
the  later  influence  of  mythology.  A  being  of  this  type,  rep¬ 
resenting  a  union  of  ethics  and  religion,  naturally  inspires 
the  believers  with  awe,  so  that  they  are  reluctant  to  name 
him.  They  do .  not  worship  him  in  temples  or  through 
images,  but  address  him  in  spontaneous  unstereotyped  prayer 
and  offer  him  first-fruits  as  a  tribute  of  adoration,  not  in  the 
frame  of  mind  of  ghost-worshipers  offering  food  to  the 
souls  of  the  departed. 

The  points  of  agreement  with  Lang’s  position  are  obvious ; 
the  main  difference  lies  in  the  stressing  of  the  occurrence  of 
a  definite,  though  as  yet  little  standardized,  cult  in  the  form 
of  supplication  and  sacrifice. 

We  must,  then,  inquire  to  what  extent  the  beliefs  and 
practices  cited  are  really  characteristic  of  the  tribes  that  in 
recent  times  correspond  most  closely  to  the  archaic  sub¬ 
stratum.  And  here  we  are  at  the  very  outset  confronted  by 
not  inconsiderable  technical  difficulties.  To  determine  ac¬ 
curately  the  religion  of  an  alien  people  is  at  best  a  difficult 
task,  as  shown  by  the  contradictory  nature  of  the  views 
found  among  such  relatively  high  and  well-known  tribes  as 
the  Crow  and  the  Polynesians.  But  concerning  many  of 
the  simplest  tribes  we  know  nothing.  Mr.  Ling  Roth  has 
faithfully  collected  everything  written  about  The  Aborigines 


128  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

of  Tasmania ,  but  the  evidence  is  so  vague,  fragmentary,  nay, 
contradictory  that  beyond  the  conviction  that  they  had  some 
form  of  belief  nothing  positive  can  be  gleaned  from  the  com¬ 
pilation.  About  the  Pygmies  of  the  Congo  forest  we  have 
no  trustworthy  data  because  their  shyness  has  hitherto  defied 
attempts  at  intensive  study.  Similar  timidity  has  been  noted 
as  characteristic  of  the  Semang,  and  though  it  can  not  be 
said  that  we  are  wholly  ignorant  regarding  their  creed,  it 
remains  true  that  our  knowledge  is  of  the  scantest  kind  and 
that  we  are  tantalized  once  more  by  conflicting  testimony.23 
Concerning  the  rudest  North  American  tribes,  such  as  the 
Shoshoneans  of  the  Great  Basin,  our  information  is  far 
from  satisfactory,  though  a  fair  body  of  mythology  has  been 
collected. 

Certainly  for  the  determination  of  those  singularly  elu¬ 
sive  points  involved  in  Schmidt’s  theory,  the  evidence  for 
any  of  the  tribes  cited  is  inadequate.  For  example,  an 
earlier  observer  among  the  Semang  records  a  belief  in  Kari, 
to  whom  his  informants  ascribed  various  attributes  of  a 
monotheistic  deity;  but  a  somewhat  later  investigator,  Mr. 
Skeat,  failed  to  find  the  slightest  corroboratory  testimony. 
Instead  he  was  told  about  a  very  powerful  and  benevolent 
being  named  Ta’Ponn,  who  was  pictured  as  the  creator  of 
the  world  and  as  inhabiting  the  eastern  heavens.  Now  the 
name  of  the  high-god  would  hardly  affect  the  argument; 
what  does  matter  is  that  Ta’Ponn  is  anthropomorphically  de¬ 
scribed  as  the  husband  of  the  moon,  the  father  of  four  chil¬ 
dren,  and  the  son  of  Earth-mother  and  her  obscure 
spouse.  Furthermore,  in  the  western  heavens  the  high-god 
has  a  powerful  adversary,  with  whom  is  associated  a  giant 
monkey;  this  ogre  pelts  into  space  any  would-be  intruders 
into  his  abode  and  the  belief  is  held  “that  when  the  end  of 
the  world  came,  everything  on  earth  would  fall  to  his  share.” 


ANIMISM 


129 

In  these  conceptions  the  idea  of  moral  retribution  is  lacking; 
further  the  benevolent  deity  is  clearly  not  all-powerful,  nor 
eternal,  nor  asexual.  In  other  words,  he  is  not  a  high-god  in 
Schmidt’s  sense.  Perhaps  the  earlier  reporter’s  account  is 
authentic,  but  until  that  fact  is  established  by  new  field-work 
the  Semang  data  will  not  help  support  the  theory  of  an 
archaic  high-god  cult. 

The  difficulty  urged  above  has  been  on  the  score  of  in¬ 
adequate  descriptive  material.  Let  us  now  turn  for  a  final 
test  of  Schmidt’s  theory  to  tribes  better  known, — to  the 
Andaman  Islanders  and  the  Bushmen.  The  former  seem 
especially  favorable  since  we  have  two  independent  accounts 
by  good  observers,  Mr.  E.  H.  Man  and  Professor  A.  R. 
Brown.  What,  then,  can  we  learn  from  these  concerning 
the  religion  of  the  natives?  First  of  all,  it  is  clear  that, 
whatever  may  be  the  high-god  conceptions  held  by  them, 
these  are  coupled  with  animistic  beliefs.  This  fact  of  course 
does  not  militate  against  Lang’s  or  Schmidt’s  theory  but  is 
worth  remembering.  The  spirits,  who  are  definitely  asso¬ 
ciated  with  the  souls  of  the  dead,  are  generally  conceived  as 
bizarre  and  fearful  beings  who  cause  sickness  and  death. 
Nevertheless,  they  sometimes  befriend  mortals  and  impart 
to  them  some  of  their  own  supernatural  powers  either  on 
chance  encounters  or  during  serious  illness  or  in  dreams,  and 
cures  are  sometimes  effected  through  their  aid.  The  only 
persons  who  in  any  way  correspond  to  the  priests  and  sha¬ 
mans  of  other  peoples  derive  their  authority  from  these 
spirits  alone. 

But  in  addition  to  these  animistic  figures  there  is  a  char¬ 
acter,  variously  named  according  to  locality,  Biliku,  Bilik  or 
Puluga,  who1  suggests  a  monotheistic  deity.  It  is  true  that 
he  has  a  counterpart  in  a  being  known  as  Tarai,  Teriya  or 
Daria,  but  since  Biliku  (to  use  a  single  term  regardless  of 


130 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


dialectic  variants)  is  clearly  more  powerful  the  dualism  is 
more  apparent  than  real.  The  question  then  narrows  itself 
down  to  a  determination  of  Biliku’s  personality,  and  here 
we  find  our  two  witnesses  in  direct  disagreement.  Mr.  Man 
pictures  him  as  an  eternal,  omniscient  creator  who  punishes 
iniquity  both  in  this  world  and  the  hereafter;  according  to 
Professor  Brown,  he  is  the  Northeast  monsoon  (Tarai  rep¬ 
resenting  the  Southeast),  is  not  omniscient  since  the  natives 
try  to  deceive  him  when  committing  ritual  offenses,  and  is 
not  in  the  least  interested  in  inflicting  penalties  for  anything 
but  the  breach  of  purely  ritualistic,  i.  e.,  non-ethical,  taboos. 
Before  discussing  the  data  furnished  by  this  more  recent  in¬ 
vestigator,  it  is  worth  noting  that  in  spite  of  his  predeces¬ 
sor’s  enumeration  of  Biliku’s  divine  characteristics  this  deity 
is  far  from  wholly  conforming  to  the  high-god  standards  set 
by  Father  Schmidt  even  on  Mr.  Man’s  own  concrete  testi¬ 
mony.  For  one  thing,  he  eats,  drinks,  sleeps,  mates,  and 
reproduces  like  a  human  being;  for  another,  the  natives  of 
South  Andaman  do  not  scruple  to  threaten  him  with  the  bite 
of  a  mythical  snake  to  prevent  him  from  causing  rain.  It 
is  of  course  very  easy  to  say  that  anthropomorphic  traits 
are  a  later  blot  on  the  loftier  archaic  picture,  but  where  is 
the  proof  for  this  assertion?  It  is  not  contained  in  the  em¬ 
pirical  data  but  represents  a  superadded  and  arbitrary  in¬ 
terpretation. 

Turning  now  to  Professor  Brown’s  material,  one  of  the 
most  striking  facts  we  encounter  is  the  lack  of  agreement 
among  his  Andamanese  informants,  both  individually  and 
locally.  Even  on  so  fundamental  a  point  as  Biliku’s  sex, 
there  is  division.  Such  variability  need  not  unduly  surprise 
us  in  view  of  our  experiences  with  the  Crow  and  the  Poly¬ 
nesians.  But  its  bearing  on  the  present  argument  is  a  pecu¬ 
liarly  significant  one.  We  are  trying  to  establish  as  an 


ANIMISM 


131 

archaic  substratum  of  human  religion  those  elements  shared 
by  the  Andamanese  with  the  Semang,  Bushmen,  and  so 
forth.  But  what  if  the  Andamanese  themselves  failed  to 
share  in  a  common  belief  ?  That  would  be  reducing  the  basic 
argument  to  an  absurdity.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  case  is 
not  so  desperate.  There  is  absolute  unanimity  concerning 
the  identification  of  Biliku  with  the  Northeast  wind,  and 
also  as  regards  the  taboos  he  insists  upon.  Other  features, 
such  as  the  association  of  this  character  with  the  discovery 
of  fire,  are  at  least  sufficiently  common  to  be  reckoned  pos¬ 
sibly  ancient  beliefs  that  have  merely  dropped  out  here  and 
there.  But  the  striking  fact  is  that  precisely  the  data  that 
would  vindicate  the  monotheistic  character  of  Biliku  are 
rare  and  of  localized  occurrence.  It  is  only  sporadically  or 
in  the  south  that  he  (she)  figures  as  a  beneficent  creator; 
the  common  view,  supported  with  much  legendary  evidence, 
makes  him  (her)  hostile  to  mankind,  or  at  best  reluctantly 
benevolent.  Thus,  we  find  the  ancestors  of  the  natives  steal¬ 
ing  fire  from  this  deity,  exiling  him,  nay,  even  killing  him  in 
revenge  for  his  attacks.  In  other  words,  the  lofty  concep¬ 
tion  of  a  high-god  dissolves  into  nothing  on  closer  scrutiny: 
even  if  we  admit  Mr.  Man’s  evidence  on  a  par  with  Pro¬ 
fessor  Brown’s,  the  new  data  demonstrate  the  absence  of  a 
general  Andamanese  belief  in  a  high-god  and  its  rarity  pre¬ 
cludes  great  antiquity.24 

Finally,  a  few  words  may  be  devoted  to  the  case  of  the 
Bushmen  of  South  Africa.  According  to  an  early  observer, 
they  differed  from  their  neighbors  in  not  praying  to  their 
ancestors  and  in  so  far  were  less  animistic ;  but  this 
does  not  by  compensation  imply  monotheistic  ideas  of  the 
type  under  discussion.  If  we  turn  to  the  incontrovertible 
evidence  of  the  natives’  own  literature,25  we  find  no  being  of 
monotheistic  dignity.  Prayers  are  addressed  to  the  moon 


132 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


and  stars.  But  the  moon  is  now  represented  as  the  Mantis’s 
shoe,  now  as  a  man  gradually  sliced  down  to  almost  com¬ 
plete  extinction  by  the  Sun;  while  the  stars  are  made  from 
roots  hurled  into  the  sky  by  a  girl  of  the  mythic  race  of 
First  Bushmen.  The  Mantis  is  a  typical  trickster.  The  Sun 
was  a  man  different  from  the  mythic  people;  he  illuminated 
only  the  space  about  his  own  habitation  by  raising  one  of  his 
armpits,  the  sources  of  light;  but  an  old  woman  induced 
some  children  to  throw  him  into  the  sky.  In  all  this  there  is 
not  a  suggestion  of  an  eternal,  primal,  benevolent  creative 
lawgiver.  It  is  of  course  conceivable  that  myths  developing 
at  a  subsequent  stage  would  obscure  the  character  of  such  a 
divinity;  but  here  as  in  other  instances  of  this  type,  actual 
evidence  for  the  sequence  postulated  by  Lang  and  Schmidt 
is  not  forthcoming. 

To  sum  up,  Schmidt’s  logical  premises  are  acceptable,  but 
it  is  impossible  to  reconstruct  an  archaic  monotheistic  layer 
of  religion  from  the  data  on  the  simplest  peoples.  On  some 
of  these  tribes,  such  as  the  Tasmanians  and  the  Congolese 
Pygmies,  information  is  practically  non-existent,  hence  they 
must  be  completely  disregarded.  In  the  case  of  the  Anda¬ 
manese,  for  whom  our  accounts  are  most  satisfactory,  in¬ 
dividual  and  local  variability  is  so  great  that  only  certain 
features  can  be  assumed  to  represent  the  proto-Andamanese 
creed,  and  these  are  precisely  not  in  harmony  with  the 
monotheistic  theory. 

It  may  appear  that  this  is  a  discouragingly  negative  result 
after  our  appreciative  introduction  of  Lang’s  and  Schmidt’s 
views.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  their  labors  have  not  been  in 
vain.  First  of  all,  there  is  the  important  anti-monistic  con¬ 
ception  of  supernatural  beings.  Whether  the  high-god  is 
later  or  earlier  than  the  conception  of  a  soul,  the  two  notions 
are  distinct  in  origin,  and  this  emboldens  us  to  inquire 


ANIMISM 


133 


whether  other  forms  of  supernatural  beings,  say,  nature- 
gods,  are  necessarily  derived  from  animistic  ideas.  Sec¬ 
ondly,  though  in  the  absence  of  adequate  data  for  at  least 
half  of  the  simplest  tribes  no  archaic  layer  can  be  recon¬ 
structed  from  this  comparison,  the  occurrence  of  a  creative 
personality  in  the  thought  of  peoples  so  lowly  as  the  Anda¬ 
manese  and  the  Semang  is  a  phenomenon  of  the  greatest 
psychological  interest,  even  though  we  must  divest  that  per¬ 
sonality  of  the  monotheistic  halo  with  which  Lang  and 
Schmidt  surround  it.  Biliku,  for  example,  may  not  be 
omniscient  or  omnipotent,  but  she  is  the  inventor  of  basketry, 
the  maker  of  celestial  bodies,  the  discoverer  of  edible  roots. 
It  is  true  that  such  a  figure  is  perhaps  primarily  no  more  than 
the  product  of  intellectual  and  esthetic  fancy,  but  it  is  equally 
true  that  it  may  easily  acquire  religious  character.  The 
germ  of  a  non-spiritual  type  of  deity  is  thus  actually  demon¬ 
strable  here.  These  results  are  admittedly  not  so  sensational 
as  would  be  the  discovery  of  Christian  theology  on  the  Ne¬ 
grito  level;  but  they  do  not  for  that  reason  lose  all  value. 
In  this  moderate  appraisal  of  the  high-god  phenomena  I  am 
glad  to  be  able  to  coincide  in  the  conclusions  of  the  learned 
Archbishop  of  Sweden.20 


Animatism 

f  Tylor’s  bias  in  favor  of  the  soul-concept  led  him,  as  we 
have  seen,  to  conceive  fetiches,  that  is,  inanimate  objects  of 
sacred  character,  as  hallowed  by  the  presence  of  a  spirit.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  he  was  inclined  to  apply  the  same  view  to 
all  instances  in  which  inanimate  reality  is  personified  by 
primitive  man.  But  as  Dr.  Marett  has  convincingly  shown, 
this  involves  an  unnecessary  hypothesis,  and  he  has  intro¬ 
duced  a  useful  conceptual  and  terminological  distinction  by 


134  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

segregating  as  “animatism”  those  cases  in  which  there  is 
mere  evidence  that  the  savage  regards  as  living  what  we 
class  as  lifeless.  When,  to  use  one  of  his  own  illustrations, 
a  South  African  yells  at  a  hurricane,  he  is  personifying  the 
natural  phenomenon,  but  we  have  no  right  to  assume  that  he 
is  thinking  of  a  being  of  relatively  refined  bodily  essence 
residing  in  and  directing  the  storm.  Similarly,  we  may  add, 
when  a  Crow  picks  up  a  curiously  shaped  rock  and  hits  upon 
the  quaint  conceit  that  it  can  reproduce  its  kind,  he  is  putting 
it  into  the  organic  kingdoms,  but  it  no  more  follows  that  he 
attributes  spirit  to  it  than  that  we  ascribe  a  soul  to  a  cat 
when  we  describe  it  as  animate. 

Dr.  Marett  makes  a  further  point  that  I  unhesitatingly  en¬ 
dorse  :  both  animism  and  animatism  are  essentially  non-re¬ 
ligious,  or  only  potentially  religious,  becoming  religious  only 
in  so  far  as  the  emotional  attitude  characteristic  of  religion 
clusters  about  their  objects.  When  a  Melanesian  distin¬ 
guishes  between  a  yam  and  a  pig  by  ascribing  to  the  latter 
a  \ital  principle,  he  is,  so  to  speak,  on  the  level  of  com¬ 
parative  biology  ,*  he  still  adheres  to  that  level  when  he  dis¬ 
tinguishes  between  a  pig  and  a  man  by  attributing  to  the 
latter  exclusive  transformation  into  a  ghost  after  death. 
But  when  he  proceeds  to  differentiate  among  the  ghosts  of 
the  deceased  and  to  ascribe  mysterious  potency  to  the  ghosts 
of  distinguished  men  only,  he  passes  the  threshold  that  sep¬ 
arates  the  everyday  world  from  the  universe  of  religion.27 

References 

1Gutmann:  127,  142-145. 

2  Brown:  136-147,  163-179. 

2  Lowie,  1909  (a)  :  226-229,  301. 

4  Tylor,  1913:  1,  429. 


ANIMISM 


135 


B  Skinner,  1913 :  85. 

6  L.  W.  Benedict:  49-65. 

7  Speck:  97.  Matthews,  1877:  50. 

8  Walker:  86-88,  155-159. 

9  L.  W.  Benedict :  54,  64. 

10  Tylor,  1913:  i,  428-479;  esp.,  428  f.,  442,  445,  450,  477- 
479;  id.,  1881 :  343. 

11  Durkheim :  66  sq.,  78-84,  347,  355,  370,  378. 

12  Malo :  150. 

13  Perry :  480. 

14  Tylor,  1913 :  11,  109  f. 

16  Tylor,  1913:  11,  hi  sq. 

16  Tylor,  1913:  11,  123,  144. 

17  Tylor,  1913:  11,  185,  247,  255,  277;  id.,  1881 :  357  sq. 

/  18  Tylor,  1913  : 11,  no,  331  sq. 

19  Lang,  1909:  160-190;  id.,  1901 :  15-45,  224  sq. 

20  R.  F.  Benedict :  43-49. 

21  Radin,  1914  (b)  :  351,  356. 

22  Koppers :  145  sq.  Schmidt,  1908-1909:  in,  590-611;  iv, 
244-250. 

23  Skeat  and  Blagden :  11,  173  sq. 

24  Brown:  136-288,  354  sq. 

25  Bleek  and  Lloyd. 

26  Soderblom :  151,  162. 

27  Marett :  14,  18,  118. 


CHAPTER  VI 


MAGIC 

/  "* 

Frazer’s  Theory 

In  Murray’s  Dictionary  magic  is  defined  as 

the  pretended  art  of  influencing  the  course  of  events,  and  of  pro¬ 
ducing  marvelous  physical  phenomena,  by  processes  supposed 
to  owe  their  efficacy  to  their  power  of  compelling  the  interven¬ 
tion  of  spiritual  beings,  or  of  bringing  into  operation  some  oc¬ 
cult  controlling  principle  of  nature. 

If  we  rapidly  pass  in  review  some  of  the  data  presented  in 
the  synthetic  sketches,  we  find  many  phenomena  that  fall 
under  the  definition.  To  resuscitate  a  dead  being,  man  or 
ghost,  by  a  particular  substance,  after  the  Ekoi  fashion,  is 
surely  to  apply  an  occult  natural  law ;  the  binding  of  a  vic¬ 
tim  s  soul  by  a  Bukaua  shaman,  and  the  Polynesian  priest’s 
muttering  of  a  magical  incantation  fall  within  the  same 
category.  The  presence  or  absence  of  spiritual  assistants  is 
considered  immaterial:  what  counts  is  how  such  spiritual 
helpers  are  regarded.  If  they  are  used  as  mere  tools,  as  a 
specific  type  of  device  for  attaining  certain  ends,  then  we  are 
dealing  with  magic,  even  though  the  feeling  accompanying 
such  procedure  may  lift  it  into  the  religious  sphere  as  de¬ 
fined  in  this  book.  The  difference  between  the  Crow  and 
the  Winnebago  attitude  towards  supernatural  beings  is  in¬ 
structive.  The  Crow  supplicates  the  powers  of  the  universe, 
who  may  yield  to  his  entreaties  or  withhold  favors  at  will ; 

136 


MAGIC 


137 


the  Winnebago  spirits  are  constrained :  if  a  man  “make  the 
requisite  offerings  to  the  Thunderbirds  they  must  accept 
them  and  bestow  on  the  suppliant  the  powers  they  possess.” 
For  at  the  time  when  the  earth  was  created  Earthmaker  or¬ 
dained  that  in  return  for  tobacco  the  spirits  were  to  bestow 
blessings  on  man.1 

So  cavalier  a  treatment  of  personal  beings,  however,  seems 
devoid  of  the  peculiar  flavor  of  religion;  and  the  whole  ap¬ 
paratus  employed  by  the  magical  practitioner,  with  or  with¬ 
out  spiritual  agencies,  suggests  other  things  than  religion  as 
popularly  understood.  Accordingly,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
in  his  great  work  Tylor  separates  Magic  from  Religion  by 
a  chasm  of  several  hundred  pages.  Magic  is  to  him  a  pseudo- 
science  based  on  the  erroneous  association  of  ideas;  and  di¬ 
vination,  in  particular,  which  he  considers  under  the  same 
general  head,  is  characterized  as  “a  sincere  but  fallacious 
system  of  philosophy.”  2 

This  general  point  of  view  has  been  elaborated  by  Sir 
James  George  Frazer,  whose  latest  exposition  shall  be  fol¬ 
lowed  here.3  In  this  connection  we  are  concerned  mainly 
with  two  points  in  his  treatment, — the  relation  of  magic  to 
science,  and  its  relation  to  religion.  In  essential  agreement 
with  Tylor,  Frazer  sees  a  basic  unity  in  magic  and  science. 
Both  assume  immutable  laws:  so  long  as  the  magician  ad¬ 
heres  to  the  rules  of  his  art  he  is  infallible,  resembling  the 
scientist  who  repeats  the  same  experimental  conditions  and 
thus  produces  the  same  reaction.  It  is  true  that  magic  is 
false  and  science  valid,  but  the  mental  operations  of  the  two 
are  alike.  Both  employ  the  association  of  ideas;  the  sum- 
total  of  empirically  tested  and  established  associations  con¬ 
stitutes  science,  the  sum-total  of  illegitimate  associations  is 
magic.  Taboo  is  merely  negative  magic  involving  the  be¬ 
lief  that  harmful  consequences  are  averted  when  certain  acts 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


138 

are  not  performed.  In  contrast  to  both  science  and  magic, 
religion  does  not  assume  the  immutability  of  nature.  On 
the  contrary,  since  it  is  “a  propitiation  or  conciliation  of 
powers  superior  to  man  which  are  believed  to  direct  and  con¬ 
trol  the  course  of  nature  and  of  human  life,”  its  central  as¬ 
sumption  is  the  variability  of  natural  phenomena  as  deter¬ 
mined  by  the  will  of  supernatural  personalities.  While  the 
scientist  or  magician  assumes  an  arrogant  attitude  towards 
the  conditions  he  controls,  the  religious  devotee  grovels  be¬ 
fore  the  beings  who  are  masters  of  the  universe  and  sway  its 
manifestations  according  to  their  caprice. 

Frazer  himself  cites  instances  to  show  that  this  clear-cut 
distinction  does  not  obtain  everywhere.  In  ancient  Egypt 
and  India,  nay,  among  the  peasantry  of  Europe,  we  find  that 
gods  are  prayed  to,  while  the  supplicants  simultaneously  re¬ 
sort  to  magical  processes ;  or  that  gods  themselves  reveal  the 
magical  knowledge  that  gives  miraculous  powers  to  its  pos¬ 
sessor.  But  such  fusion,  we  are  told,  is  a  relatively  late  de¬ 
velopment  ;  and  this  brings  us  to  a  cardinal  part  in  Frazer's 
scheme, — its  chronology. 

According  to  our  author,  the  Age  of  Religion  in  the  sense 
defined  above  has  been  everywhere  preceded  by  an  Age  of 
Magic,  the  regularity  of  this  sequence  rivaling  the  estab¬ 
lished  succession  of  the  Stone  and  Metal  Ages.  Two  argu¬ 
ments  are  advanced  on  behalf  of  this  conclusion, — one  of 
them  resting  on  a  priori  grounds,  the  other  on  the  empirical 
facts  of  distribution.  First  of  all,  it  is  contended  that  the 
association  of  ideas  constituting  magic  is  psychologically  sim¬ 
pler  than  the  conception  of  personal  beings,  is  indeed  so  sim¬ 
ple  that  it  occurs  even  among  animals.  Hence  it  is  probable 

0 

that  man  essayed  to  bend  nature  to  his  wishes  by  the  sheer 
force  of  spells  and  enchantments  before  he  strove  to  coax  and 


MAGIC 


i39 

mollify  a  coy,  capricious  or  irascible  deity  by  the  soft  insinuation 
of  prayer  and  sacrifice. 

The  second  argument  again  divides  in  two.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  Australians,  “the  rudest  savages  as  to  whom  we 
possess  accurate  information,”  universally  practice  magic 
and  eschew  religion;  they  are  all  magicians,  none  of  them 
priests.  On  the  other  hand,  magic  is  essentially  uniform 
wherever  found,  while  religion  is  notoriously  diverse.  But 
generally  the  range  of  a  cultural  element  is  proportionate  to 
its  antiquity.  Hence  magic,  the  invariable,  is  older  than  re¬ 
ligion.  Only  gradually  the  leaders  of  thought  came  to  real¬ 
ize  the  futility  of  magical  procedure,  which  they  supplanted 
with  religious  rites,  while  the  weaker  intellects  continued  to 
cling  at  least  partially  to  their  faith  in  magic. 

Frazer’s  theory  has  the  merit  of  throwing  into  relief  two 
divergent  primitive  attitudes, — the  one  implying  an  appeal 
to  personal  helpers  in  the  form  of  prayer,  the  other  resting 
on  the  application  of  a  formula  that  may  or  may  not  involve 
the  constraint  of  such  helpers  but  excludes  supplication. 
The  differentiation  is  a  useful  one,  most  useful,  however, 
when  considered  as  defining  two  limiting  cases,  two  types  of 
reaction  conceivably  antithetical,  yet  often  coexisting  among 
the  same  people. 

For  example,  on  Frazer’s  theory  the  Winnebago  who  ad¬ 
dresses  a  “spirit”  with  a  tobacco  offering  forces  him  to 
grant  the  favor  desired,  hence  we  are  dealing  with  magic. 
But  from  our  observer’s  concrete  illustrations — and,  indeed, 
from  some  of  his  explicit  statements — it  appears  that  the 
matter  is  not  quite  so  simple.  There  are  certainly  individ¬ 
ual  differences  in  the  attitudes  of  Winnebago  visionaries,  by 
no  means  all  of  whom  adhere  to  the  mechanical  theory  of 
cause  and  effect  broached  by  some  of  Dr.  Radin’s  witnesses. 


140 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


Nay,  we  can  go  farther  and  declare  categorically  that,  what¬ 
ever  these  Indians  may  say  or  think  they  think,  their  attitude 
practically  never  corresponds  to  that  of  Frazer’s  magician. 
For,  we  are  told: 

The  personal  religious  experiences  were  very  sacred  and 
rarely  told  even  to  near  relatives.  As  far  as  I  know,  they  were 
only  told  before  death  or  when  a  person  was  very  ill.  .  .  . 

If  it  is  merely  a  case  of  compulsion  of  spirits  by  recourse  to 
a  set  recipe,  whence  the  sanctity  of  the  encounter?  The 
case  is  really  typical.  As  Dr.  Marett  has  shown,  the  error 
of  Frazer’s  interpretation  lies  in  false  intellectualistic  psy¬ 
chologizing.  There  is  no  evidence  that  the  magician  among 
the  Winnebago  or  elsewhere  normally  postulates  the  uni¬ 
formity  of  natural  phenomena.  On  the  contrary,  there  is 
everything  to  suggest  that  he  performs  his  acts  “solemnly, 
earnestly,  in  short,  in  a  spirit  of  reverent  humility  which  is 
surely  akin  to  homage,”  and  what  applies  to  “positive  magic” 
in  Frazer’s  sense  holds  equally  for  his  “negative  magic”  or 
taboo.4 

To  revert  to  the  Winnebago,  if  they  are  not  uniformly  re¬ 
ligious  according  to  Frazer’s  definition,  neither  are  they  by 
any  means  pure  magicians  in  his  sense.  There  is  certainly 
a  vacillation  in  the  attitude  of  different  Indians,  perhaps  even 
of  the  same  Indian  at  different  times. 

This  lack  of  a  sharp  distinction  can  be  illustrated  by  ma¬ 
terial  from  other  areas.  As  Dr.  Marett  points  out  in  one 
of  the  essays  of  the  book  quoted,  thin  partitions  often  di¬ 
vide  the  spell  from  prayer :  a  slight  change  in  the  formula¬ 
tion  of  words,  a  possibly  transitory  personification  may  con¬ 
vert  the  magical  formula  into  a  religious  petition.  This 
is  well  brought  out  by  an  intensive  comparison  of  the  sev- 


MAGIC 


141 

eral  magical  performances  of  the  Bukaua.  As  demonstrated 
in  the  sketch  presented  above,  these  conform  generally  to  a 
single  style  of  procedure.  But  while  in  many  cases  the  in¬ 
cantation  is  a  mere  recital  of  incidents  without  the  sugges¬ 
tion  of  prayer,  there  are  equally  stereotyped  formulas  in 
which  an  ancestor  is  supplicated  to  grant  a  request.  Are, 
then,  the  Bukaua  to  be  classed  as  magicians  or  as  religious 
devotees  ?  The  instance  illustrates  the  arbitrariness  of  which 
we  should  be  guilty  if  we  assigned  them  wholesale  to  either 
category. 

With  these  qualifications  Frazer’s  definition  of  the  two 
types  of  attitude  may  be  accepted ;  that  is,  they  do  not  cor¬ 
respond  to  uniformly  identifiable  modes  of  tribal  behavior 
but  roughly  describe  the  more  or  less  prevalent  character  of 
individual  reactions.  Apart  from  this,  I  cannot  concede  to 
Frazer’s  scheme  the  slightest  basis :  it  seems  to  me  to  mis¬ 
represent  grossly  the  psychological  situation,  while  its  his¬ 
torical  contentions  are  equally  devoid  of  validity. 

The  psychological  error  has  already  been  exposed  above 
in  the  treatment  of  the  Winnebago  case  and  the  exposition 
of  Dr.  Marett’s  views.  For  good  measure  I  will  throw  in 
a  discussion  of  divination,  for  though  not  dealt  with  as 
magic  by  Sir  James  it  offers  an  a  fortiori  case  inasmuch  as 
it  represents  a  phase  of  primitive  thought  strictly  compara¬ 
ble  and  is  saturated  with  intellectual  motives  to  a  degree  that 
preeminently  seems  to  warrant  its  definition  as  a  pseudo¬ 
science. 

Divination  is  probably  nowhere  more  highly  elaborated 
than  among  the  Thonga  of  Southeastern  Africa,  who  shall 
therefore  serve  for  purposes  of  illustration.  M.  Junod, 
our  authority,  is  full  of  admiration  for  the  intricate  system 
of  these  natives,  for  the  skill  with  which  they  have  inter¬ 
woven  with  the  practice  every  aspect  of  their  social  life.  In 


142 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


a  sense  it  is  a  national  pastime  to  interpret  the  meaning 
of  a  throw  of  the  astragalus  bones  and  other  objects  con¬ 
stituting  a  complete  divination  set;  'nevertheless,  only  the 
initiated  pass  as  fully  equipped  diviners.  Now  what,  we 
ask,  is  the  attitude  of  one  of  these  adepts  toward  his  appa¬ 
ratus  ( bula )  ?  Is  it  the  attitude  of  a  surveyor  toward  his 
theodolite,  of  a  chemist  toward  his  reagents,  of  an  architect 
towards  his  scaffolding?  Not  at  all.  One  of  M.  Junod’s 
informants  once  ejaculated:  “You  Christians  believe  in 
your  Bible.  Our  Bible  is  much  better  than  yours!  It  is 
the  divinatory  bones !”  Mankhelu,  we  are  told,  “was  at¬ 
tached  to  his  divinatory  bones  by  all  the  fibers  of  his  heart.” 
He  had  two  sets,  one  called  the  “Father”  and  used  at  home, 
while  the  “Son”  was  taken  along  on  travels.  M.  Junod 
tried  to  buy  one  of  them  for  his  ethnographical  collection, 
but  the  wizard  could  not  be  prevailed  upon  to  sell  either. 
All  this  hardly  betokens  the  attitude  of  a  nascent  Helmholtz 
or  Galileo. 

It  might  be  suggested  that  the  reverential  attitude  here 
displayed  has  its  psychological  basis  in  that  association 
with  supernatural  beings  which,  according  to  Frazer,  may 
set  in  as  a  secondary  development.  But  the  argument  re¬ 
mains  unshaken  by  this  consideration.  To  be  sure,  some 
connection  with  religion  in  Frazer’s  sense  exists.  The  an¬ 
cestral  gods  were  themselves  bone-throwers  and  are  in¬ 
voked  to  give  or  to  revive  the  spirit  of  divination.  Mank¬ 
helu,  for  example,  derived  one  of  his  prophecies  from  his 
father’s  spirit.  But  such  association  is  definitely  incidental 
and  unessential: 

The  Bula,  the  Word,  is  not  generally  considered  as  being  the 
utterance  of  the  ancestor-gods.  The  bones  are,  in  a  certain 
sense,  superior  to  the  gods,  whose  intentions  they  disclose.  The 


MAGIC  143 

Bula  is  the  revelation  of  a  somewhat  impersonal  power,  inde¬ 
pendent  of  the  gods.”  5 

In  other  words,  the  Bula  is  sacred  and  supernatural,  and 
is  so  not  in  a  derivative  fashion  but  in  its  own  right.  Its 
emotional  concomitants  are  not  those  of  mere  intellectual 
curiosity  but  are  closely  similar  to  those  evoked  by  the 
objects  of  religious  devotion.  Both  the  parallelism  of 
magic  and  science  and  antithesis  of  magic  and  religion 
thus  rest  on  inadequate  psychological  analysis. 

To  turn  next  to  the  chronological  sequence  advanced 
by  Frazer,  the  a  priori  argument  adduced  is  absurd.  It  is 
for  comparative  psychologists  to  decide  whether  and  how 
far  down  the  scale  of  the  organic  kingdom  animals  can 
be  credited  with  the  power  of  associating  ideas.  But  even 
if  we  make  the  most  liberal  concessions  in  this  respect, 
it  remains  true  that  while  all  magic  may  consist  in  the 
association  of  ideas  (though  we  have  just  seen  reason  to 
repudiate  such  a  purely  rationalistic  interpretation)  it  does 
not  follow  that  all  association  of  ideas  leads  to  magical 
beliefs  and  rites.  After  asserting  that  without  associating  * 
ideas  beasts  could  not  survive,  Frazer  triumphantly  asks: 

But  who  attributes  to  the  animals  a  belief  that  the  phenomena 
of  nature  are  worked  by  a  multitude  of  invisible  animals  or  by 
one  enormous  and  prodigiously  strong  animal  behind  the  scenes  ? 

The  fact  is  that  the  things  compared  here  are  not  on  the 
same  plane.  We  ask  in  reply,  “Who  attributes  to  animals 
a  faith  in  the  uniformity  of  nature,  a  belief  that  the  same 
ceremony  accompanied  by  the  same  spell  will  produce  iden¬ 
tical  results?  What  animal  has  ever  made  an  effigy  of 
its  hunter  to  cause  his  destruction?  What  beast  ever 


144 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


secured  an  enemy’s  hair  to  croon  a  spell  over  it?”  The 
logical  error  involved  here  is  really  of  an  incredibly  ele¬ 
mentary  character.  As  soon  as  we  pass  from  the  mere 
association  of  ideas  underlying  magic  to  magical  processes 
themselves  the  extreme  simplicity  alleged  by  Frazer  van¬ 
ishes  in  thin  air. 

The  inductive  proof  for  the  priority  of  magic  does  not 
indeed  rest  on  a  patent  logical  absurdity  but  is  unacceptable 
on  empirical  grounds.  It  is  not  true  that  the  Australians 
are  the  “rudest”  savages  concerning  whom  accurate  infor¬ 
mation  is  available;  it  is  not  true  that  they  practice  magic 
to  the  virtual  exclusion  of  religion;  it  is  not  true  that  magic 
is  essentially  uniform  in  the  world  as  contrasted  with  re¬ 
ligion. 

In  a  previous  chapter  we  have  already  listed  those  peoples 
who  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  the  “rudest”  known,  and 
certainly  they  do  not  represent  a  higher  level  than  the 
Australians.  Let  us  take  the  three  best-known,  the  Anda¬ 
man  Islanders,  the  Bushmen,  and  the  Semang  of  the  Malay 
Peninsula,  and  examine  Frazer’s  thesis  in  the  light  of  our 
information  about  their  beliefs. 

Among  the  Andamanese  there  are  certainly  magical  prac¬ 
tices  of  some  sort :  thus  human  bones  are  believed  to  drive 
away  evil  spirits,  and  the  same  property  is  attributed  to 
fire,  which  is  accordingly  always  kept  burning  by  the  side 
of  a  patient.  A  practitioner  may  avail  himself  of  such 
methods  if  he  chooses;  but  he  has  other  means  of  dispelling 
the  disease-causing  spirits,  viz.,  “addressing  them  and  con¬ 
juring  them  to  go  away,”  for  “in  his  dreams  he  can  com¬ 
municate  with  the  spirits  and  can  persuade  them  to  help 
him  to  cure  the  sick  person.”  This  is  manifestly  a  case 
of  the  conciliation  of  superior  beings.  It  is  worth  adding 
that  whatever  extraordinary  knowledge  of  the  magical 


MAGIC 


145 


properties  of  objects  a  shaman  has  is  supposed  to  be  de¬ 
rived  from  his  spirits.6 

The  Bushman  data  are  of  the  same  general  tenor.  Magic 
was  performed,  as  when  a  man  unable  to  reach  home  threw 
earth  into  the  air  so  that  his  wife  at  home  might  see  the 
dust.  But  there  is  also  positive  evidence  for  prayer  to  the 
moon  and  stars.7 

Finally,  the  Semang  perform  various  acts  typical  of 
magic,  such  as  the  sending  of  a  bamboo  sliver  against  the 
enemy’s  heart.  But  though  this  tribe  displays  a  very  weak 
development  of  religious  ritual,  invocation  and  sacrifice  are 
not  absent.  The  more  important  of  their  deities  are  ad¬ 
dressed  in  spontaneous  prayer;  and  blood  drawn  from  the 
region  of  the  shinbone  is  thrown  to  the  skies  as  a  sacrifice 
to  Kari  or  the  ghosts.8 

But  the  Australians  themselves,  surely  rude  even  though 
not  “rudest,”  fail  to  support  Frazer’s  arguments.  It  is 
indeed  a  fact  that  the  Central  Australians  described  by 
Spencer  and  Gillen  constantly  utilize  magic  and  are  repoited 
never  to  appeal  for  assistance  to  supernatural  beings.  But 
congeners  of  theirs  not  one  whit  more  advanced  in  general 
culture  by  no  means  uniformly  refrain  from  such  propitia¬ 
tory  rites.  Thus,  the  Dieri  perform  a  ceremony  directed 
towards  the  alien  race  of  sky-dwellers  called  Mura-mura, 
who  in  times  of  drought  are  asked  to  supply  rain,  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  in  case  of  excessive  showers  they  are 
invoked  to  restrain  the  precipitation.  To  this  must  be  added 
the  unimpeachable  testimony  of  Mrs.  Parker,  a  life-long 
observer  of  the  Euahlayi.  The  “high-god  of  this  people, 
Byamee,  is  invoked  on  a  number  of  occasions.  People 
pray  to  him  at  funerals  on  behalf  of  the  souls  of  the 
dead;  orphans  successfully  address  him  to  secure  rain,  at 
the  close  of  initiation  rites  the  oldest  attending  medicine- 


146 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


man  prays  to  him  for  long  life;  and  even  a  female  shaman, 
debarred  by  her  sex  from  communing  with  him  under  his 
proper  name,  has  been  known  to  supplicate  him  for  rain 
through  the  intercession  of  a  tutelary  spirit.9 

The  only  inference  that  can  fairly  be  drawn  from  the 
facts  is  that  among  very  rude  peoples  magic  and  religion 
(in  Frazer’s  sense)  coexist. 

What  shall,  however,  be  said  of  the  argument  from  dis¬ 
tribution?  Admitting  with  qualifications  that  the  range  of 
a  cultural  element  is  proportionate  to  its  age,  we  must  reject 
the  conclusion  drawn,  because  once  more  Sir  James  is  not 
comparing  comparable  phenomena.  If  religions  are  com¬ 
pared  in  their  specific  characteristics  and  magical  faiths 
only  as  regards  their  most  abstract  common  traits,  the 
former  will  of  course  appear  diverse  and  the  latter  uniform. 
A  fair  survey,  on  the  other  hand,  will  bring  out  frequent 
recurrences  of  religious  no  less  than  of  magical  practice. 

On  the  other  hand,  magic  is  very  far  from  presenting 
that  uniform  character  one  might  infer  from  Frazer’s  state¬ 
ment.  Even  one  of  the  two  main  branches  into  which  he 
divides  magic,  to  wit,  contagious  magic,  is  not  represented 
among  the  Arunta  and  their  Central  Australian  neighbors. 
For,  if  we  can  rely  on  the  definite  statement  of  Spencer  and 
Gillen,  Frazer’s  favorite  authorities,  the  custom  of  bewitch¬ 
ing  a  person  by  first  securing  and  then  charming  a  lock 
of  his  hair  or  some  detachable  part  of  his  body  does  not 
occur  in  this  area.10  To  take  another  aspect  of  magic,  in 
our  sense,  divination  as  a  definite  art  is  far  from  universal 
and  is  certainly  less  pronounced  in  America  than  in  the 
Old  World;  and  within  the  Old  World  we  find  a  definite 
regional  distribution  for  such  divinatory  techniques  as 
scapulimantia,  the  art  of  foretelling  events  from  the  cracks 
in  an  animal’s  shoulder  blade.  Again,  the  practice  of  chant- 


MAGIC 


147 


in g  spells,  universally  recognized  as  magical,  which  was 
found  so  highly  elaborated  in  Polynesia  and  New  Guinea, 
is  far  less  conspicuous  in  North  America,  where  the  exten¬ 
sive  use  of  magical  formulae  is  restricted  to  special  districts, 
such  as  northern  California. 

In  short,  Frazer’s  argument  breaks  down  at  every  point, 
and  even  if  we  adopt  his  definitions  there  is  no  reason  to 
ascribe  greater  antiquity  to  magic  than  to  religion.  Ipso 
facto ,  our  broader  definition  of  religion  will  not  support 
such  a  chronological  hypothesis.  In  the  state  of  our  knowl¬ 
edge,  both  magic  and  religion  are  best  regarded  as  ex¬ 
tremely  ancient  components  of  the  human  world-view.  But 
since  the  magical  has  been  found  to  partake  of  the  psycho¬ 
logical  character  of  the  religious,  no  good  ground  for  a 
sharp  division  of  the  two  remains,  and  it  is  permissible 
to  regard  the  magical  beliefs  and  practices  as  religious  in 
-our  sense  of  the  term.  If  this  seems  unacceptable,  it  will 
be  necessary  at  least  to  follow  Drs.  Marett  and  Golden- 
weiser,  who  conceive  of  Magic  and  Religion  as  two  distinct 
compartments  or  branches  of  one  larger  whole,  Supernat- 
uralism. 

In  the  interest  of  clearness,  however,  a  few  supplementary 
statements  seem  called  for.  Magic — not  only  as  generally 
defined,  but  as  specifically  dealt  with  by  Frazer  under  the 
headings  of  “imitative  magic”  and  “contagious  magic” — 1 
is  assuredly  akin  to  religion  if  the  psychological  factors 
are  taken  into  account.  On  the  other  hand,  primitive  man 
undoubtedly  does  form  a  vast  number  of  associations  in  a 
matter-of-fact  way,  and  the  generalizations  based  on  these 
constitute  his  lore,  the  psychological  equivalent  of  our  sci¬ 
ence  irrespective  of  its  objective  value.  Some  of  this — ■ 
indeed  an  appreciable  portion  of  it — is  genuine  knowledge 
resting  on  sound  observation  and  inference,  as  Drs.  Golden- 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


148 

weiser  and  Marett  contend.11  But  the  residue,  which  we 
are  obliged  to  reject  when  testing  it  in  the  light  of  our 
knowledge,  does  not,  for  that  reason,  belong  to  a  different 
category  from  a  psychological  point  of  view. 

It  is  the  native’s  frame  of  mind  that  invariably  decides 
the  matter.  In  so  far  as  he  observes  and  reasons  without 
enveloping  his  mental  operations  with  the  atmosphere  of 
supernaturalism  he  is  none  the  less  a  scientist  or  at  least  a 
precursor  of  science  because  of  his  errors,  for  mistakes 
from  sheer  ignorance  are  committed  by  our  greatest  think¬ 
ers.  When  a  Bukaua  hears  the  call  of  the  mo  qua  bird, 
he  infers  that  the  enemy  is  planning  an  attack;  when  he 
hears  the  soqueng,  this  is  accepted  as  the  harbinger  of  a 
visit  from  a  neighboring  village.  These  are  associations 
of  ideas,  devoid  so  far  as  one  can  see  of  any  trace  of 
religious  sentiment,  mere  summaries  of  experience:  they 
are  pseudo-science.  Again,  when  a  Crow  in  Montana  or 
a  Jagga  on  ^e  slopes  of  Mt.  Kilimanjaro  assures  a  sneezer 
that  some  one  is  calling  him  by  name,  we  are  once  more 
dealing  with  false  science,  though  this  is  magic  neither  in 
Frazer’s  sense  nor  in  any  one  else’s.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  attitude  of  the  Bukaua  sorcerer,  the  Thonga  diviner, 
the  Maori  spell-chanter,  is  different  not  because  they  are 
objectively  farther  from  the  truth,  but  because  one  and  all 
they  err  not  as  cool  observers  who  happen  to  be  only  partly 
familiar  with  a  range  of  facts  but  as  inveterate  devotees 
of  supernaturalism. 

This  conception  of  a  domain  of  supernaturalism  embrac¬ 
ing  both  magic  and  religion  and  opposed  to  the  sphere  of 
the  everyday  world  that  includes  as  a  late  product  scientific 
thought  runs  counter  to  Durkheim’s  theory.  For  while  the 
French  sociologist  likewise  dichotomizes  the  universe  into 
two  antithetical  principles,  the  Sacred  and  the  Profane,  his 


I 


MAGIC 


149 

Sacred  does  not  coincide  with  ours,  which  is  merely  syn¬ 
onymous  with  the  Extraordinary  or  Supernatural,  often 
modified,  by  an  additional  affective  tinge,  into  the  Holy. 
Natural  and  Supernatural,  Durkheim  argues,  are  correla¬ 
tive  concepts;  the  Supernatural  is  merely  the  negation  of 
Nature.  Then,  how  can  the  Supernatural  have  been  con¬ 
ceived  by  early  man,  who  had  no  notion  of  a  natural  order 
in  the  universe?  For  that  is  demonstrably  a  late  develop¬ 
ment;  and  before  it  evolved,  human  beings  had  no  reason 
to  reject  the  most  marvelous  occurrences  as  impossible.12 

To  recognize  the  false  intellectualistic  psychologizing  be¬ 
hind  this  specious  reasoning  is  to  knock  it  into  a  cocked 
hat.  Dr.  Marett  anticipated  and  clearly  refuted  the  objec¬ 
tion  when  he  wrote: 

The  savage  has  no  word  for  “nature.”  He  does  not  ab¬ 
stractly  distinguish  between  an  order  of  uniform  happenings 
and  a  higher  order  of  miraculous  happenings.  He  is  merely 
concerned  to  mark  and  exploit  the  difference  when  presented 
in  the  concrete.13 

A  man  does  not  need  to  have  studied  comparative  anatomy 
to  see  that  a  bird  is  not  a  fish,  nor  to  have  analyzed  his 
sensations  to  know  that  one  woman  inflames  him  with  ardor 
while  another  leaves  him  cold.  So  an  Ekoi  does  not  keep 
a  double  catalogue  to  which  he  refers  as  occasion  arises 
to  decide  whether  an  audition  is  normal  or  abnormal :  he 
hears  his  Oji  tree  calling  and  in  the  middle  of  the  night, 
regardless  of  consequences,  he  dashes  towards  it.  He 
knows  intuitively,  immediately,  spontaneously,  that  the 
summons  is  generically  different  from  that  of  a  tribesman, 
even  of  a  chief,  and  he  reacts  accordingly  with  the  pre¬ 
cision  of  a  lower  organism  exhibiting  its  tropisms.  Our 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


150 

conception  of  the  Supernatural  involves  nothing  but  such 
differential  response  to  external  or  internal  stimulation. 

Durkheim’s  Theory 

Durkheim,  like  Frazer,  separates  magic  and  religion;  but, 
as  might  be  expected,  his  reasons  are  quite  different.14 
While  he  regards  religion  as  founded  in  a  sense  of  the 
Sacred,  as  contradistinguished  from  the  Profane,  he  adds 
a  vital  differentia :  religion  in  its  historical  forms  is  invari¬ 
ably  linked  with  a  church.  That  is  to  say,  there  is  always 
a  body  of  votaries  united  by  the  same  ideas  of  the  Sacred 
and  by  the  same  practices  revolving  about  it.  Now  such 
a  bond,  the  argument  runs,  is  lacking  in  magic.  The  re¬ 
lations  of  a  sorcerer  to  his  clients  are  like  a  doctor’s  to  his 
patients;  they  form  no  basis  for  any  kind  of  church.  This 
situation  is  not  altered  when  the  magician  works  for  the 
public  good  rather  than  for  private  individuals :  there  is 
still  no  permanent  or  durable  tie  established  between  the 
practitioner  and  his  beneficiaries. 

It  is  true  enough,  Durkheim  admits,  that  sometimes  ma¬ 
gicians  assemble  in  fraternities.  But,  first,  such  association 
is  not  essential  to  the  practice  of  magic;  secondly,  even  at 
best  it  does  not  supply  a  parallel  to  a  church  organization. 
For  a  brotherhood  of  wizards  would  correspond  merely  to  an 
association  of  priests  without  the  congregation  of  laymen; 
and  where  is  there  a  church  made  up  exclusively  of  priests  ? 

Anticipating  a  protest  from  another  angle,  the  French 
sociologist  takes  cognizance  of  such  individual  subjective 
experiences  as  have  been  described  in  our  first  synthetic 
sketch.  He  does  not  deny  their  existence  but  explains  them 
away  as  constituting  not  so  many  individual,  that  is,  church- 


MAGIC 


151 

less  forms  of  religion  but  so  many  minor  variants  of  one 
social  religion  corresponding  to  a  single  church. 

In  this  last  contention  there  is  indeed  a  germ  of  truth. 
We  have  seen  that  even  the  extreme  subjectivism  of  the 
Crow  is  quite  consistent  with  a  spontaneous  conformity 
to  tribal  standards.  That,  however,  is  a  subordination  not 
to  a  clear-cut  church  doctrine  but  to  that  far  vaguer  thing, 
a  common  cultural  background.  The  same  objects  are  not 
held  sacred  by  all  the  Crow,  nor  do  they  display  an  identical 
behavior  toward  their  respective  sacred  objects.  When  a 
Crow  shaman  allows  a  young  warrior  to1  go  out  with  his 
own  medicine,  his  attitude  does  not  differ  fundamentally 
from  that  of  a  magician  towards  his  client.  And  when  a 
number  of  braves  singly  resort  to  him,  there  is  still  no 
necessity  for  a  congregational  development;  there  is  cer¬ 
tainly  a  possibility  for  it,  but  so  there  is  in  the  case  of  a 
magician’s  clients.  In  so  far,  however,  as  such  a  group  is 
united,  the  members  are  segregated  from,  not  merged  in, 
a  tribal  Church.  Precisely  as  the  Crow  shaman’s  notions 
and  practices  are  circumscribed  by  the  traditional  Crow 
culture,  the  Bukaua  magician’s  technique,  taboos,  and  spells 
are  determined  by  Bukaua  culture.  There  is  as  much  or 
as  little  of  a  church  in  one  case  as  in  the  other.  In  both 

y 

there  is  automatic  acceptance  of  the  received  beliefs,  while 
in  neither  is  there  a  rigid  conformity  to  a  set  of  tribally 
established  dogmas  and  observances.  The  sociological  dis¬ 
tinction  between  magic  and  religion  is  untenable. 

References 

1  Radin,  1923 :  279,  289. 

2  Tylor,  1913 : 1,  117-136. 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


x52 

3  Frazer:  11-60. 

4  Marett :  29,  38,  73,  190. 

6  Junod :  11,  488  sq.,  493  sq. 

6  Brown :  178  f.,  184. 

7  Bleek  and  Lloyd:  57,  81,  339,  385. 

8  Skeat  and  Blagden:  11,  174,  198  f.,  205  f.,  233. 

9  Spencer  and  Gillen,  1904:  490  sq.  Howitt:  395  sq.  Par¬ 
ker:  8. 

10  Spencer  and  Gillen,  1899:  553;  ei.,  1904:  478,  605. 

11  Goldenweiser,  1922:  154. 

12  Durkheim :  33-40. 

13  Marett :  109. 

14 Durkheim:  60-65. 


CHAPTER  VII 


COLLECTIVISM 

In  the  preceding  chapters  I  have  several  times  referred 
to  Durkheim’s  theories,  and  uniformly  in  a  critical  spirit. 
This  attitude  will  not  be  abandoned  in  reviewing  the  core 
of  his  system,  hence  a  prefatory  word  of  explanation  seems 
desirable  in  order  to  guard  against  misunderstanding.  I 
am  convinced  that  the  cardinal  tenets  of  Durkheim’s  scheme 
are  unacceptable,  but  I  should  not  like  to  be  understood 
as  denying  that  it  represents  an  estimable  intellectual  achieve¬ 
ment.  Indeed,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  it  is  the  only  compre¬ 
hensive  effort  since  Tylor’s  day  to  unify  religious  data 
from  a  wholly  novel  angle.  Moreover,  Durkheim’s  inci¬ 
dental  interpretations  of  religious  phenomena  in  the  con¬ 
crete  sometimes  reveal  considerable  acumen,  and  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  adopt  his  views  on  at  least  one  important 
subject. 

Let  us  recall  that  Durkheim’s  minimum  definition  of 
religion  implies  an  antithesis  of  the  Sacred  and  the  Pro¬ 
fane,  and  the  union  of  fellow-worshipers  of  the  Sacred  in 
a  sort  of  church.  In  casting  about  for  the  key  to  the  mys¬ 
tery  of  religion,  that  is,  of  its  origins, /our  author  goes  to 
the  Australians  because  they  are  said  to  represent  the  pri¬ 
meval  condition  of  human  communal  life.  Their  concepts 
of  sacredness  are  all  wrapped  up  in  totemic  ritualism,  hence 
the  essence  of  their  totemism  will  be  the  essence  of  archaic 
religion.  What,  then,  is  the  essence  of  Australian  totem- 

153 


I54 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


ism?  On  the  surface  it  seems  that  certain  species  of  the 
animal  kingdom  are  the  sacred  objects  of  adoration.  But 
that  is  only  a  superficial  view,  says  Durkheim.  For  many 
of  these  sacred  totems  are  such  insignificant  specimens  of 
organic  life  as  the  ant,  the  lizard,  or  the  rat.  Surely  these 
are  too  insignificant  to  thrill  primitive  man  with  a  sense 
of  holiness;  and  more  impressive  phenomena  of  nature, 
such  as  the  stars,  rarely  function  as  totems  in  Australia. 
Moreover,  it  is  not  the  animals  and  plants  themselves  to 
which  the  natives  attach  the  maximum  of  holiness,  but 
to  their  representations,  the  totemic  symbols.  The  prob¬ 
lem  thus  narrows  down  still  further  and  becomes  equivalent 
to  that  of  the  significance  of  the  symbols. 

Durkheim  has  a  ready  solution :  the  symbols  are  em¬ 
blematic  at  the  same  time  of  the  totemic  principle  or  “god” 
and  of  the  clan.  “Si  done  il  est,  a  la  fois,  le  symbole  du  dieu 
et  de  la  societe,  n’est-ce-pas  que  le  dieu  et  la  societe  ne  font 
qu’un?”  In  other  words,  the  social  group  or  clan  is  the 
god  of  the  clan,  is  the  totemic  principle,  but  disguised  and 
“represente  aux  imaginations  sous  les  especes  sensibles  du 
vegetal  ou  de  l’animal  qui  sert  de  totem.” 

It  remains  to  show  how  society  could  have  the  power 
of  calling  forth  the  sense  of  the  divine.  According  to  our 
author,  this  results  from  the  fact  that  the  relationship  of 
society  to  the  individual  parallels  that  of  the  typical  deity 
to  the  typical  worshiper.  On  the  one  hand,  society  domi¬ 
nates  every  member  by  its  superior  authority,  overriding 
the  individual  will  regardless  of  personal  considerations; 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  source  of  strength,  for  to  be  in 
harmony  with  one’s  fellows  is  to  be  inspired  with  confi¬ 
dence  and  courage  such  as  the  devout  believer  enjoys  when 
he  is  conscious  of  the  benevolent  gaze  of  his  god.  Further¬ 
more,  all  of  a  man’s  cultural  possessions  are  the  gift  of 


COLLECTIVISM 


155 


society.  In  short,  the  individual  consciousness  finds  an 
environment  peopled  with  forces  at  once  transcendently 
potent  and  helpful,  august  yet  benevolent;  it  objectifies  its 
relevant  impressions  as  we  objectify  our  sensations,  but 
with  a  significant  difference :  these  sensations  do  not  evoke 
the  sentiment  of  awe,  they  correspond  to  the  profane  as 
contrasted  with  the  sacred  part  of  the  universe.  In  the 
case  of  primitive  man,  Durkheim  further  contends,  the 
religious  sentiment  would  be  inspired  primarily  not  by 
society  as  a  whole  but  by  the  immediate  group  with  which 
he  is  related,  viz.,  the  totemic  clan. 

For  the  origin  of  the  fundamental  difference  between  the 
sacred  and  the  profane  which  he  regards  as  essential  to 
religion,  Durkheim  has  recourse  to'  the  antithesis  he  notes 
in  Australian  society  between  the  workaday  and  the  cere¬ 
monial  season.  The  former  is  characterized  by  the  peace¬ 
ful  monotony  of  isolated  economic  activity,  the  latter  by 
the  all  but  frenzied  excitement  incident  to  the  big  festive 
assemblies,  a  contrast  which  prefigures  that  of  the  profane 
and  the  sacred. 

The  question  is  naturally  asked,  why  it  was  necessary 
for  the  native  to  conceive  the  social  forces  in  the  guise  of 
plant  and  animal  symbols.  Durkheim  answers  the  latter 
query  by  pointing  out  that  the  primitive  Australian  is  above 
all  a  hunter  and  that  animals  most  naturally  suggest  them¬ 
selves  to  his  imagination;  such  phenomena  as  the  several 
stars  are  not  sufficiently  distinguishable  to  serve  as  badges 
for  a  considerable  number  of  distinct  clans.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  choice  of  some  symbol  is  imperative:  the  clan 
is  too  complex  a  concept  to  be  grasped  in  its  concrete  unity, 
while  the  totemic  symbol  is  the  flag  of  its  group,  the  visible 
body  of  its  god.  Moreover,  that  period  of  excitement 
which  gives  rise  to  the  sense  of  the  sacred  passes  away; 


156  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

if  there  were  no  outward  sign  to  survive  as  a  rally  ing-point, 
the  religious  sentiment  itself  would  vanish. 

In  this  interpretation  of  totemism  there  is  something 
like  an  anticipation  of  the  Freudian  interpretation  of 
dreams.  Things  are  not  what  they  seem  on  the  surface 
but  have  a  hidden  meaning.  Totems  are  not  the  real  ob¬ 
jects  of  worship  but  acquire  sacred  character  in  so  far  as 
they  symbolize  the  clan,  which  is  the  real  god.  Neverthe¬ 
less,  once  sanctified  by  this  symbolization,  they  become  the 
center  of  ritual  performances  and  themselves  appear  as  the 
source  of  awe-inspiring  and  benevolent  activities.  By  con¬ 
tact  with  them,  in  turn,  other  objects,  intrinsically  of  a 
religiously  indifferent  character,  also  acquire  sanctity,  and 
thus  whole  systems  of  sacred  things  evolve.  The  relation¬ 
ship  of  the  totemite  to  the  totem  which  looms  so  large  as 
the  manifest  content  of  the  faith  is  a  secondary  attempt 
by  the  natives  to  explain  why  they  believe  and  act  as  they  do. 

Durkheim  especially  piques  himself  on  having  escaped 
what  he  considers  the  vital  error  of  the  two  most  signifi¬ 
cant  rival  theories,  animism  and  naturalism.  Both  of  these 
derive  religion  from  illusions.  But  a  phenomenon  of  such 
vital  importance  in  the  life  of  humanity  as  religion  cannot 
be  founded  in  unreality.  Durkheim’s  view  avoids  such 
error,  he  thinks,  by  basing  religion  on  an  indubitable  verity, 
. — the  social  group.  Specifically  with  reference  to  natural¬ 
ism,  Durkheim  contends  that  it  is  incomprehensible  -  how 
such  erroneous  notions  of  nature  as  are  implied  in  natural¬ 
ism  could  have  persisted  among  mankind.  If,  however, 
the  clan  is  god  and  if  the  latent  goal  of  religion  is  not  the 
adjustment  of  man  to  the  outer  world  but  the  integration 
of  society,  then  the  most  absurd  notions  of  nature  might 
be  entertained  and  would  be  irrelevant,  hence  would  not 
affect  the  believers’  attitude.  Further,  nature  is  incapable 


COLLECTIVISM 


157 


of  arousing  the  religious  sentiment.  It  is  too  uniform  to 
produce  deep  emotions;  and  even  if  it  could  evoke  sur¬ 
prise  and  admiration  it  nowhere  suggests  a  duality  of  the 
sacred  and  profane,  such  as  is  indispensable  for  the  con¬ 
cept  of  religion. 

While  by  no  means  inclined  to  join  in  the  paeans  of  praise 
that  have  been  intoned  in  Durkheim’s  honor,  I  repeat  that 
his  essay  is  a  noteworthy  mental  exercise  and  would  rank 
as  a  landmark  if  dialectic  ingenuity  sufficed  to  achieve 
greatness  in  the  empirical  sciences.  Even  as  it  is,  the  fresh¬ 
ness  of  his  approach  is  at  times  stimulating  and  reconciles 
us  somewhat  to  a  narrowness  that  balks  at  no  measure 
of  absurdity.1 

The  present  book  is  not  a  treatise  on  logic,  and  it  would 
profit  us  little  to  follow  Durkheim’s  thoughts  into  all  their 
ramifications.  Without  slavishly  summarizing  Dr.  Golden- 
weiser’s  exposition  and  critique,  let  us  rather  follow  the 
broad  sweep  of  this  writer,  who,  more  appreciative  of  the 
French  sociologist’s  mental  operations  than  we  profess  to 
be,  has  nevertheless  repeatedly  made  his  system  the  butt 
of  his  critical  acumen.2  His  strictures  fall  into  three  cate¬ 
gories, — the  ethnological,  the  sociological,  and  the  psycho¬ 
logical. 

From  the  ethnological  point  of  view  Dr.  Goldenweiser 
pertinently  asks  whence  the  non-totemic  peoples  have  de¬ 
rived  their  religion.  Durkheim  proceeds  on  the  assump¬ 
tion,  now  thoroughly  discredited,  that  the  sib  (clan)  in 
the  typical  form  of  the  totemic  sib  is  a  universal  trait  of 
very  rude  cultures.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  has  already 
been  shown  that  the  simplest  tribes  in  both  the  Old  World 
and  the  New  World  lack  sibs  and  totems.  No  such  insti¬ 
tution  occurs  among  the  Andamanese  of  the  Bay  of  Bengal 
or  the  Chukchi  of  Siberia,  nor  has  it  been  reported  from 


158  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

the  Tasmanians,  the  Congolese  Pygmies,  or  the  Bushmen. 
If  it  be  objected  with  some  plausibility  that  our  knowledge 
of  the  three  tribes  just  mentioned  is  too  inadequate  to 
permit  negative  data  to  weigh  heavily,  there  is  the  wholly 
unobjectionable  evidence  from  the  Western  Hemisphere, 
where  the  sib  organization  is  uniformly  absent  from  all  the 
rudest  hunting  tribes  and  in  North  America  is  an  almost 
regular  accompaniment  of  horticulture.  The  Mackenzie 
River  Athabaskans,  the  Shoshoneans  of  the  Great  Basin, 
the  tribes  of  Washington  and  Oregon  a^e  sibless,  while 
the  sedentary  Iroquois  and  Pueblo  tribes  are  organized 
into  sibs  with  at  least  totemic  names,  if  not  with  a  full- 
fledged  totemism;  for,  as  we  cannot  resist  mentioning  in¬ 
cidentally,  the  sib  organization  is  by  no  means  uniformly 
linked  with  totemism.  These  simple  facts  had  been  pointed 
out  by  Dr.  S wanton  some  years  before  the  publication  of 
Durkheim’s  book,  but  the  French  sociologist  prefers  to 
ignore  them  and  to  take  for  his  point  of  departure  a  de¬ 
monstrably  false  theory  of  primitive  society. 

In  short,  then,  there  are  many  non-totemic  peoples  and 
among  them  precisely  are  those  of  simplest  culture.  But 
they  all  have  some  sort  of  religion!  Shall  \Ve  assume  that 
they  only  obtained  their  beliefs  and  practices  by  contact  with 
and  borrowing  from  the  higher  totemic  cultures?  The 
assumption  is  not  a  priori  probable,  and  empirically  there 
is  not  the  slightest  proof  for  it  except  as  respects  specific 
features  of  religious  culture,  such  as  may  be  borrowed 
back  and  forth  under  favorable  conditions.  Dr.  Ruth  Ful¬ 
ton  Benedict  has  recently  examined  Durkheim’s  thesis  with 
reference  to  the  North  American  data,  selecting  for  dis¬ 
cussion  the  relations  of  totemism  to  the  most  persistent 
of  North  American  religious  traits,  the  guardian-spirit 
complex.3  This  feature  is  not  only  by  virtue  of  its  range 


COLLECTIVISM 


159 

far  older  than  totemism  but  also  turns  out  to  be  highly 
developed  where  no  traces  of  totemism  have  ever  been  re¬ 
corded.  It  is  therefore  impossible  to  derive  the  guardian- 
spirit  belief  from  totemic  conceptions.  On  the  contrary, 
there  is  good  evidence  that  in  certain  regions  totemism, 
which  otherwise  has  a  very  meager  religious  content,  “tends 
to  take  its  coloring  from  the  guardian-spirit  concept,  and 
the  high-water  marks  of  a  religious  attitude  towards  the 
totem,  which  beyond  doubt  are  found  on  this  continent, 
are  intelligible  from  this  fact.” 

To  summarize  the  essentials  of  the  ethnological  argu¬ 
ment,  Durkheim — like  Frazer — has  been  deceived  by  the 
rash  assumption  that  the  primeval  culture  of  humanity  is 
represented  in  Australia.  In  reality,  the  Australians  have 
only  a  moderate,  certainly  not  an  exclusive,  claim  to  being 
reckoned  among  the  rudest  peoples,  and  what  holds  for 
them  in  the  way  of  religion  does  not  correspond  to  a  uni¬ 
versal  archaic  faith  of  mankind. 

From  the  sociological  angle,  Goldenweiser  objects  that 
while  ostensibly  Durkheim  deifies  society  his  conception 
of  it  in  the  role  of  god  is  a  singularly  narrow  one  since 
he  practically  identifies  society  with  the  crowd.  While  this 
may  not  be  a  wholly  accurate  statement  of  the  case,  our 
critic  is  undoubtedly  right  as  regards  the  origin  of  the  re¬ 
ligious  sentiment,  for  that  Durkheim  surely  traces  to  the 
crowd-psychological  situation  typified  by  the  atmosphere 
of  the  Australian  ceremonial  season.  Now,  as  Goldenweiser 
remarks,  man  does  not  objectify  his  crowd  as  something 
distinct  from  and  superior  to  himself,  but  identifies  him¬ 
self  with  it :  “the  crowd  or  group  self  is  the  self  par  ex¬ 
cellence.”  Again,  a  crowd  setting  never  creates  a  specific 
psychic  state:  crowd  ecstasy  is  merely  a  feeling  of  joy 
carried  fo  an  extreme  degree,  and  so  with  all  other  emo- 


i6o  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

tional  states ;  they  are  not  originated  but  merely  intensified 
by  the  crowd.  As  Goldenweiser  trenchantly  asks,  Why  is 
it  that  the  gatherings  of  Indians  for  secular  dances  are 
not  transformed  into  religious  occasions  if  the  assembly 
itself  gives  rise  to  the  sentiments  of  religion? 

To  these  comments  I  should  like  to  add  another.  In  so 
far  as  Durkheim  does  not  identify  divine  society  with  the 
crowd,  he  rather  lightly  fixes  upon  the  sib  as  the  social 
group  that  would  at  the  same  time  loom  as  the  god-like 
protector  and  curber.  No  doubt  the  individual  derives 
sustenance  and  protection  from  his  own  sib,  but  that  is 
equally  true  of  his  local  or  tribal  group  as  a  whole.  Why, 
then,  should  the  sib  alone  function  as  the  nascent  god  ?  On 
the  other  hand,  restraint  is  precisely  what  one’s  own  sib 
does  not  usually  exercise, — that  is  left  to  the  other  sibs. 
If  by  special  act  of  grace  we  follow  Durkheim  to  his 
favorite  Australian  field,  special  difficulties  arise.  He  in¬ 
sists  that  the  individual  acquires  his  culture  from  society. 
But  the  society  from  which  he  acquires  it  is  only  in  small 
measure  his  sib.  For  example,  in  a  matrilineal  Australian 
tribe  a  boy  belongs  indeed  to  his  mother’s  sib,  but  his 
training  in  woodcraft  is  derived  from  his  father,  regard¬ 
less  of  rules  of  descent,  and  later  his  education  is  com¬ 
pleted  in  the  camp  that  unites  all  the  bachelors,  irrespective 
of  kinship.  The  leap  from  society  as  a  whole  to  the  in¬ 
dividual’s  own  sib  seems  to  be  in  no  way  justified  by  Durk- 
heim’s  reasoning.  We  are  obliged  to  conclude  that  his 
theory  neither  explains  how  the  assemblages  of  the  cere¬ 
monial  season  create  religious  emotion  nor  why  the  sib 
should  be  singled  out  for  masked  adoration  from  among 
all  the  social  units  when  it  is  only  one  of  a  series  all  of 
which  jointly  confer  on  him  the  blessings  of  culture  and 
of  protection. 


COLLECTIVISM 


161 


To  turn  to  the  psychological  aspect  of  the  case,  under 
this  head  we  must  consider  first  of  all  the  idea  that  nature 
cannot  inspire  primitive  man  with  religious  emotion  and 
that  he  does  not  feel  the  superiority  of  natural  forces  over 
human  beings.  Durkheim’s  error  here  is  all  the  more  re¬ 
grettable  because  with  his  initially  skeptical  attitude  on  the 
subject  he  might  have  made  a  perfectly  valid  and  interest¬ 
ing  ethnographic  point  in  correction  of  a  widespread  fal¬ 
lacy.  There  is  really  no  necessity  for  attaching  religious 
value  to  cosmic  phenomena,  plausible  as  that  may  seem 
to  the  closet  philosopher.  For  example,  the  Thonga  of 
Southeast  Africa  never  personify  or  worship  the  sun  or 
moon,  while  the  stars  also  play  an  insignificant  part  in  their 
thought.  In  fact,  altogether  the  forces  of  nature  are  quite 
subordinate  to  the  ghosts  of  ancestors  in  the  religious  life 
of  these  people.4  What  we  require  here,  as  in  so  many 
other  phases  of  culture-history,  is  an  investigation  of 
regional  distributions.  The  best  prophylactic  against  base¬ 
less  speculation  that  man  must  believe  this  or  do  that  is 
the  actual  knowledge  that  throughout  a  definite  part  of  the 
globe  he  believes  and  does  nothing  of  the  kind. 

But  any  such  ethnographic  point  of  view  is  quite  foreign 
to  Durkheim,  who  merely  combats  one  psychological  dogma 
with  another.  So  far  from  the  truth  is  the  alleged  impos¬ 
sibility  of  nature  to  impress  mankind  with  religious  senti¬ 
ments  that  perhaps  a  majority  of  North  American  Indians 
have  the  most  specific  myths  and  rites  in  connection  with 
natural  phenomena.  The  sun  and  the  thunder,  for  exam¬ 
ple,  are  widely  reverenced,  and  the  Pawnee  of  Nebraska 
developed  a  veritable  astral  cult.  To  return  to  Africa,  the 
great  deities  of  the  Ekoi  were  found  to  be  associated  with 
sky  and  earth,  while  among  the  Andamanese  the  two  main 
gods  direct  the  principal  winds  of  the  area.  Without 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


162 

going  further,  we  can  safely  reject  Durkheim’s  anti-nat¬ 
uralism  as  absurd. 

But,  as  Goldenweiser  has  forcibly  explained,  Durkheim 
is  guilty  of  false  psychologizing  in  another  direction  also, 
for  he  underestimates  to  an  incredible  degree  the  capacity 
of  individuals  for  religious  experience,  quite  independently 
of  the  crowd,  which  prophets  and  seers  often  notoriously 
shun.  The  typical  North  American  vision-quest,  as  among 
the  Crow,  involves  a  lonely  vigil,  and  the  thrill  that  comes 
to  the  successful  seeker  may  possibly  remain  his  life-long 
secret. 

Finally,  there  is  something  almost  pathetically  inept 
about  Durkheim’s  plea  that  unlike  animism  and  naturalism, 
his  collectivist  theory  rests  on  the  solid  rock  of  reality. 
In  this  context  the  objective  reality  of  the  religious  con¬ 
struct  is  irrelevant :  the  sense  of  sacredness  remains  a  fact 
whatever  may  have  produced  it  and  its  subjective  value 
remains  unaffected  by  metaphysical  considerations  of  illu¬ 
sion  and  reality  arising  in  another  consciousness.  Inci¬ 
dentally  we  may  well  ask  in  what  sense  natural  phenomena 
are  less  real  than  society.  It  is  true  that  as  religious  ob¬ 
jects  they  may  be  fantastically  personified,  but  then  society 
in  the  form  in  which  it  is  pictured  by  Durkheim  as  capable 
of  becoming  a  “god”  bears  very  little  resemblance  to  the 
society  of  actual  experience.  As  for  animism,  Durkheim 
ignores  once  more  the  fact  that  the  concept  of  spirit  is 
not  exclusively  derived  from  the  illusions  of  dream  life  but 
in  part  from  the  contrast  between  the  living  body  and  the 
corpse,  which  is  real  enough. 

Before  parting  from  the  French  sociologist’s  original 
but  unsound  speculations,  I  should  like  to  direct  attention 
to  one  phase  of  his  work  that  rests  on  a  surer  foundation. 
His  treatment  of  symbolism  seems  to  me  excellent.  There 


COLLECTIVISM 


163 

is  little  doubt  that  symbols  may  concentrate  the  worshiper’s 
religious  fervor  upon  themselves  and  that  their  holiness  may 
in  turn  flow  into  still  other  channels.  We  have  seen  how 
devoutly  a  Crow  will  regard  the  feather  that  is  basically 
merely  a  badge  of  his  vision  yet  becomes  glorified  out  of 
proportion  to  its  intrinsic  value  through  that  association; 
and  the  communicability  of  holiness  is  one  of  the  striking 
features  in  the  Polynesian  taboo  system. 

In  this  connection  Durkheim’s  view  that  the  specific  na¬ 
ture  of  the  object  worshiped  is  immaterial  may  likewise 
be  cited  as  coinciding  altogether  with  the  position  here 
assumed.  It  is  hardly  susceptible  of  doubt  that  the  person 
of  a  sovereign  may  call  forth  a  sentiment  hardly  distin¬ 
guishable  from  religious  emotion;  and  the  abstractions  la¬ 
beled  “Country”  and  under  certain  conditions  “Liberty” 
and  “Reason”  have  an  equal  potency.  If  we  adhere  to  the 
psychological  point  of  view,  we  shall  find  no  reason  to 
exclude  such  ideas  from  the  rank  of  “gods.”  Of  this,  more 
anon. 

We  leave  Durkheim  with  the  consolatory  reflection  with 
which  Mach  once  commented  on  Herbart,  that  after  all  this 
eminent  thinker  has  not  been  exclusively  a  perpetrator  of 
errors. 

*  References 

1  Durkheim :  97-121,  293-334. 

2  Goldenweiser,  1917:  121  sq. ;  id.,  1922:  360  sq. 

3  R.  F.  Benedict :  61  sq. 

4Junod:  11,  281-285. 


Part  III:  Historical  and  Psychological 

Aspects 


CHAPTER  VIII 


HISTORICAL  SCHEMES  AND  REGIONAL 
CHARACTERIZATION 

To  apply  a  historical  point  of  view  is  to  the  minds  of 
not  a  few  scholars  equivalent  to  elaborating  a  scheme  of 
sequences.  Tylor’s  theory  of  animism  is  historical  in  that 
sense,  though  he  assumed  a  unilinear  development  which 
modern  representatives  of  the  historical  schools  reject*^ 
With  some  writers  the  tendency  to  predicate  relative 
chronology  is  so  strong  that  they  cannot  help  ascribing  a 
like  disposition  to  others  who  do  not  share  their  obsession. 
Thus,  because  Dr.  Marett  insisted  on  the  antiquity  of  the 
sense  of  the  supernatural  and  its  independence  of  the  ghost- 
soul  concept,  he  has  been  credited  with  the  assumption  of 
a  pre-animistic  era,  which  he  expressly  disavows.1  Those 
who  have  been  most  active  in  repudiating  unilinear  evo¬ 
lutionism  have  not  abstained  from  outlining  a  generalized 
scheme  of  religious  history, — generalized  not  in  the  sense 
of  ascribing  one  course  of  development  for  all  peoples 
but  as  purporting  to  sketch  along  its  several  distinct  paths 
the  religious  history  of  all  humanity. 

Father  Schmidt’s  scheme,  while  not  accessible  in  this 
country  except  in  summary  form,  serves  as  an  ideal  illus¬ 
tration  of  a  multilinear  system.2  First  of  all  he  assumes 
an  archaic  culture  now  only  represented  by  the  very  rudest 
peoples,  whose  faith  is  characterized  positively  by  a  belief 
in  a  high-god,  by  the  union  of  religion  and  ethics,  and 
the  beginnings  of  prayer  and  ritual,  while  negatively  the 

167 


i68  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

lack  of  ancestor-worship  and  magic  are  noteworthy  cri¬ 
teria.  Upon  this  common  substratum  three  diverse  struc¬ 
tures  were  reared  in  mutual  independence, — the  horticul¬ 
tural,  the  totemic,  and  the  pastoral.  Horticulture  was  a 
feminine  invention  and  produced  a  corresponding  social 
preponderance  of  the  female  sex,  which  found  expression 
in  matrilineal  descent  and  in  the  worship  of  a  female  deity, 
the  Moon.  Animism  and  an  ancestral  cult  also  arose, 
largely  in  connection  with  a  revolt  of  the  masculine  under¬ 
dog,  which  led  to  the  organization  of  men’s  associations, 
that  is,  secret  societies  designed  to  curb  woman’s  power. 
In  the  second,  totemic  culture,  which  evolved  elsewhere, 
masculine  precedence  was  mirrored  in  the  adoration  of  a 
solar  deity  of  male  sex;  totemic  beliefs  and  -the  excessive 
reliance  on  magic  as  contrasted  with  archaic  dependence 
on  a  high-god  were  significant  features.  Finally,  pastoral 
nomadism  adhered  more  tenaciously  to  primeval  monothe¬ 
ism  :  neither  sun  nor  moon  but  a  sublime  heaven-god,  the 
Jahve  of  the  Semites  and  the  Dyaus  pitar  of  Indo-Germanic 
peoples,  occupied  the  first  place  among  divine  beings.  As 
for  subsequent  events  in  the  history  of  religion,  they  were 
the  result  of  interaction  among  these  three  primary  differ¬ 
entiations  of  the  archaic  culture. 

Much  might  be  said  concerning  the  sociological  assump¬ 
tions  underlying  this  -theory  and  especially  with  reference 
to  its  naive  economic  determinism,  but  detailed  criticism 
is  hardly  in  place  so  long  as  the  full  evidence  adduced  by 
the  author  of  the  scheme  cannot  be  examined.  Our  pres¬ 
ent  concern  is  with  quite  a  different  phase  of  the  matter. 
I  must  repeat  what  I  said  in  my  discussion  of  animism, 
that  Father  Schmidt  and  his  school  quite  underestimate  the 
technical  difficulties  to  be  overcome  in  a  historical  recon¬ 
struction  where  religion  is  the  subject-matter.  Every  such 


HISTORICAL  SCHEMES  169 

reconstruction  obviously  rests  ultimately  on  the  descriptive 
data,  and  it  is  precisely  these  which,  even  when  abundant, 
are  usually  far  too  intricate  to  admit  of  a  convenient  sum¬ 
mary  by  one  or  two  catchwords  such  as  “solar  cult”  or 
“animism”  and  “magic.”  Even  in  so  rude  a  tribe  as  the 
Andamanese  we  have  to  reckon  with  a  supernaturalism  of 
at  least  triple  form, — Biliku  and  his  counterpart  Tarai;  the 
spirits  of  the  deceased;  and  a  variety  of  magical  concep¬ 
tions.  We  have  already  seen  that  in  spite  of  the  simplicity 
of  such  conditions  the  relative  weighting  of  factors  is  far 
from  easy.  No  wonder  that  in  circumstances  of  greater 
complexity  the  problem  may  become  practically  insoluble. 
On  how  many  peoples  is  the  evidence  even  approximately 
so  complete  and  SO'  trustworthy  as  for  the  Ewe  of  Togo, 
West  Africa?  Herr  Spieth,  as  the  result  of  his  years  of 
missionary  experience,  has  given  us  in  Die  Ewe-Stamme 
an  admirable  account  replete  with  documentation  in  the 
vernacular.  Yet  when  Spieth  in  another  treatise  essays 
to  give  a  general  summary  of  Ewe  religion,  a  fellow-mis¬ 
sionary  cannot  assent  to  some  of  his  most  important  prop¬ 
ositions,  those  relating  to  the  high-god  and  to  the  here¬ 
after.  The  critic  concludes :  “Die  Arbeit  ist  mit  viel  Fleiss 
geschrieben;  und  doch  legt  sie  der  Leser  unbefriedigt 
beiseite,  da  sie  so  viele  Fragen  nicht  oder  nur  unklar 
beantwortet.”  3 

To  cite  another  example,  the  Crow  seem  unable  to  de¬ 
cide  as  to  the  character  and  identity  of  the  Sun.  No  doubt 
by  making  an  indefinite  number  of  arbitrary  auxiliary 
hypotheses  a  skillful  dialectician  could  explain  away  the 
obscurities,  but  that  would  be  the  lawyer’s  rather  than  the 
scientist’s  procedure;  and  in  the  present  instance  even  the 
special  pleader’s  task  would  be  an  arduous  one.  If  he 
set  out  from  the  plausible  proposition  that  the  Sun  is  the 


170 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


archaic  high-god  obscured  by  mythological  fancy  and  what 
not,  he  would  be  confronted  forthwith  with  the  query 
why  the  Crow,  who  are  matrilineal,  have  given  to  their 
supreme  being  the  solar  and  masculine  character  that  might 
be  expected  from  a  patrilineal  group,  while  the  moon,  which 
is  really  conceived  in  feminine  guise  here,  is  of  quite  sub¬ 
ordinate  importance.  But  to  leave  dialectics  for  scientific 
argumentation,  the  whole  discussion  on  this  basis  is  from 
our  point  of  view  a  meaningless  irrelevancy  because  we 
have  found  that  the  specific  nature  of  the  “god”  is  im¬ 
material  to  the  Crow  and  that  it  is  the  subjective  experience 
that  is  really  significant  to  him.  In  characterizing  the  re¬ 
ligion  of  this  tribe  I  have  actually  shown  how  at  all  events 
the  greater  part  of  their  beliefs  and  practices  can  be  con¬ 
nected  with  the  vision.  Nevertheless,  the  catchword  “vision” 
is  no  more  successful  than  other  catchwords  in  doing  jus¬ 
tice  to  the  marvelous  wealth  of  concrete  situations  that  are 
invariably  bound  up  with  religion;  and  still  less  is  it  capa¬ 
ble  of  even  remotely  indicating  the  historical  relations  of 
Crow  religion,  which  are  manifold  and  point  in  diverse 
directions. 

I  should  not  like  to  be  misunderstood  as  opposing  histor¬ 
ical  reconstructions  on  principle;  quite  the  contrary  is  the 
case.  But  in  this  field  of  inquiry  there  is  still  so  much 
doubt  as  to  the  raw  materials  themselves  that  historical 
schemes,  except  if  confined  to  narrow  limits,  are  likely  to 
come  to  grief.  How  can  we  reconstruct  history  if  even 
the  facts  of  regional  distribution  are  far  from  clear?  About 
ten  years  ago  Dr.  Paul  Radin  surveyed  the  data  of  North 
American  religion  and  concluded  that  a  belief  in  the  local¬ 
ization  of  spirits,  in  genii  loci ,  is  prevalent  in  this  continent 
and  underlies  the  guardian-spirit  concept.  But  Mrs.  Bene¬ 
dict  has  recently  shown  that  what  Dr.  Radin  considered  a 


HISTORICAL  SCHEMES 


171 

universal  correlation  is  a  strictly  localized  one  and  that  gen¬ 
erally  the  guardian  spirit  is  in  no  way  associated  with  the 
local  genius.4 

The  immediate  task  of  the  comparative  student  is  there¬ 
fore  a  sifting  of  the  material,  an  accurate  determination  of 
specific  tribal  religions  and  upon  this  basis  a  series  of 
intensive  distribution  studies  covering  successively  culture 
areas,  continents,  and  the  whole  globe.  In  the  absence  of 
adequate  preliminary  regional  surveys,  the  following  re¬ 
marks  on  some,  not  all,  major  areas  are  to  be  taken  as 
purely  tentative. 

North  America  is  characterized  by  the  conspicuousness 
of  the  subjective  experience  conveniently  labeled  “vision” 
and  by  the  frequency  with  which  tutelaries  are  derived 
from  such  abnormal  psychic  states,  a  correlation  which 
Mrs.  Benedict  has  shown  to  be  by  no  means  an  organic, 
logical  correlation  but  a  fortuitous  historical  conjunction.5 
This  author  has  demonstrated  the  basic  importance  of  the 
vision  in  this  continent  by  producing  evidence  that  even 
among  the  Pueblo  Indians,  where  the  hypertrophy  of  group 
ritualism  dwarfs  the  significance  of  individual  revelations, 
such  experiences  are  far  from  wholly  lacking.  But  though 
the  vision  itself  is  ubiquitous,  its  correlates  vary  considera¬ 
bly:  in  one  area,  for  instance,  all  men  strive  for  a  revela¬ 
tion,  as  among  the  Crow,  while  elsewhere,  as  in  California, 
vision  and  tutelary  are  the  shaman’s  prerogative.  Com¬ 
pared  with  other  divisions  of  the  globe,  North  America 
is  likewise  distinguished  by  the  extreme  development  of 
more  or  less  spectacular  ceremonialism,  often  bound  up 
with  definite  organizations.  This  trait  is  weakly  devel¬ 
oped  only  in  the  extremely  rude  cultures  of  the  Mackenzie 
River  region,  the  Great  Basin,  and  adjoining  territories. 

The  South  American  phenomena  are  not  sufficiently 


172 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


known  to  admit  of  a  comprehensive  statement,  for  such 
meaningless  catchwords  as  “animism,”  which  in  no  way 
differentiate  one  area  of  the  world  from  another,  must  be 
rigidly  barred  in  the  interests  of  an  ultimate  comprehen¬ 
sion  of  the  facts.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  worth  noting 
that  direct  intercourse  with  the  supernatural — in  short,  the 
equivalent  of  the  vision — is  distinctive  of  native  doctors 
in  the  tropical  forest  region,  nay,  as  far  south  as  Tierra 
del  Fuego.  In  the  latter  region  the  investigations  of  Fathers 
Koppers  and  Gusinde  have  brought  to  light  a  number  of 
interesting  parallels  between  the  southernmost  Yahgan  and 
North  American  tribes.  The  Fuegians  represent  the  Cal¬ 
ifornian  and  Siberian  rather  than  the  Crow  or  Winnebago 
type,  for  there  is  no  universal  seeking  of  a  revelation  but 
a  sudden  imperative  call  to  special  individuals  in  the  form 
of  some  soul-stirring  psychic  experience.  To  be  sure,  there 
is  a  deliberate  attempt  to  induce  hallucinations  by  rigorous 
fasting  in  a  wizards’  school,  but  only  persons  with  a  spe¬ 
cific  vision  or  a  definite  predisposition  enter  the  fold  of 
pupils,  and  to  become  a  full-fledged  shaman  the  vision  is 
prerequisite.  Again,  as  in  California  and  Siberia,  resistance 
to  the  supernatural  summons  is  fraught  with  danger.  An¬ 
other  definite  resemblance  consists  in  the  acquisition  of  a 
song  taught  to  the  visionary  by  his  supernatural  protector. 
In  order  properly  to  appreciate  the  significance  of  such 
analogies  it  would  be  necessary  to  possess  fuller  data  on 
other  South  American  tribes  than  are  at  present  available. 
However,  the  possibility  should  be  kept  in  mind  that  the 
Fuegians  may  have  preserved  very  ancient  elements  of 
New  World  religion.  From  the  point  of  view  of  ceremoni¬ 
alism,  the  simpler  South  Americans  do  not  rival  the  North¬ 
ern  peoples  of  corresponding  status;  however,  even  the 


HISTORICAL  SCHEMES  173 

Fuegians  have  secret  cult  organizations  and  performances 
with  simple  masks. 

The  higher  American  cultures  from  Mexico  to  Peru  are 
naturally  associated  with  a  great  elaboration  of  ritual,  which 
reveals  certain  marked  features.  Most  noteworthy  is  the 
excessive  development  of  bloody  sacrifices,  human  sacrifices 
being  especially  common  among  the  Aztecs.  In  North 
America  bloody  sacrifices,  even  of  animals,  are  definitely 
rare,  the  Pawnee  (Nebraska)  offering  of  a  maiden  and 
that  of  a  white  dog  by  the  Iroquois  being  notable  excep¬ 
tions.  The  apparently  systematic  practice  of  divination  in 
the  more  complex  cultures  likewise  merits  consideration. 

Asia,  the  home  of  many  higher  centers  of  civilization, 
largely  falls  outside  the  scope  of  our  present  survey,  but 
regarding  one  of  its  larger  subdivisions,  Siberia,  some 
statements  are  called  for.  It  is  to  a  remarkable  degree  a 
region  of  shamanistic  activity;  in  other  words,  the  direct 
intercourse  with  the  supernatural  world  is  in  the  fore¬ 
ground.  However,  it  seems  that  here  communication  with 
beings  of  another  sphere  is  restricted  in  the  main  to  definite 
individuals  instead  of  being  sought  by  all  or  the  majority 
of  men,  as  in  many  North  American  tribes.  Among  the 
Turkic  tribes  the  tutelaries  are  predominantly  ancestral, 
while  the  more  important  Chukchi  equivalents  belong  to 
other  categories  of  supernatural  beings.  Turks  and  Mon¬ 
gols  are  further  characterized  by  the  dualistic  conception 
of  a  good  and  an  evil  being  of  great  power.  Fiom  the 
ritual  point  of  view  we  may  note  the  wide  occurrence  of 
bloody  animal  sacrifices,  whether  of  dogs,  reindeer  or 
horses;  also,  the  method  of  divination  known  as  scapuli- 
mantia,  that  is,  by  the  cracks  in  a  sheep,  reindeer,  or  other 
animal  shoulderblade  held  above  a  fire,  a  usage  which 


I74 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


Dr.  Andree  has  traced  from  the  Chukchi  to  the  Mongols 
and  Turks,  and  indeed  into  westernmost  Europe.  The 
special  regard  shown  to  the  bear,  culminating  among  the 
Ainu  and  Amur  River  peoples  in  a  great  public  festival, 
will  engage  our  attention  a  little  later. 

Africa  tbe^.an^estxir-wxirship  appealing  in  Siberia  and 
carried  to  extremes  in  the  higher  Chinese  civilization  is 
a  widespread  phenomenon, — certainly  Jar  more  so  than 
<Tf5i^isn?1Grrthe  sense~of  a  cult  centering  in  carved  effigies 
of  divine  beings,  for  this  appears  in  typical  form  only  in 
the  West.  Sorcery  is  of  tremendous  practical  importance, 
and  in  association  with  it  the  appeal  to  ordeals  and  such 
elaborate  systems  of  divination  as  have  been  described  for 
tribes  so  remote  from  each  other  as  the  Southeastern 
Thonga  and  the  Ekoi  of  Kamerun  and  Nigeria.  Cere¬ 
monial  activity  is  often  linked  with  two  ideas, — the  initia¬ 
tion  of  one  or  both  sexes  into  the  status  of  an  adult,  and 
a  definite  cult  belonging  to  a  secret  fraternity  or  sorority, 
which  not  infrequently  employs  masks.  These  religious 
brotherhoods  thrive  especially  in  the  West  but  have  been 
found  as  far  east  as  Ruanda,  a  country  east  of  Lake  Kivu. 
Bloody  sacrifices  are  probably  common  throughout  the 
Dark  Continent. 

The  Polynesian  religion  has  been  characterized  at  some 
length  in  a  previous  chapter,  and  for  the  simpler  Melanesian 
area,  including  New  Guinea,  we  content  ourselves  with 
•  referring  to  the  prevalence  of  ghost-worship  and  magic. 
This  latter,  in  the  form  of  sorcery,  finds  an  extraordinary 
development  in  Australia.  Here,  too,  is  found  an  elaborate 
ceremonialism,  connected  on  the  one  hand  with  the  initiation 
of  boys  into  the  status  of  full-fledged  tribesmen,  on  the 
other  with  totemic  conceptions,  such  as  the  desire  to  mul¬ 
tiply  the  totem  animal. 


HISTORICAL  SCHEMES 


175 


This  brief  and  wholly  inadequate  summary  must  not,  I 
repeat,  be  taken  too  seriously;  least  of  all,  should  negative 
conclusions  be  drawn  from  it  in  an  absolute  sense.  For 
example,  sorcery  is  given  as  a  characteristic  of  the  Aus¬ 
tralians  and  Negroes,  but  not  of  the  North  Americans. 
Nevertheless,  tribes  like  the  Menomini  of  Wisconsin  had 
sorcerers  who  destroyed  their  victims  by  imitative  and 
contagious  magic,  deriving  their  power  from  the  mythical 
horned  snake.  Guardian  spirits  bestowing  the  arts  of  black 
magic  upon  their  proteges  have  been  noted  widely  in  the 
Algonkian  family,  and  also  among  the  dakelma  of  Ore¬ 
gon.  The  Pueblo  Indians,  indeed,  possibly  dread  witch¬ 
craft  quite  as  much  as  the  Africans  and  explain  by  it  such 
afflictions  as  droughts  and  disease ;  the  Cochiti  imputed  to 
sorcery  so  recent  an  epidemic  as  that  of  1896.6  Neverthe¬ 
less,  when  the  totality  of  religious  phenomena  in  these  sev¬ 
eral  cases  is  considered,  there  is  warrant,  I  think,  for  as¬ 
signing  to  this  phase  of  supernaturalism  a  comparatively 

humble  place. 

Again,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  lack  of  ancestor-worship 
islTIugmlicanr^  religion. 

As  Mrs.  Benedict  has  shown,  even  ghosts,  irrespective"!}! 
their  kinship,  rarely  become  tutelaries  and  never  to  the  sub-  | 
ordination  of  other  beings.  Nevertheless,  the  suggestion  * 
of  an  ancestral  cult  appears  in  the  Pueblo  area.  Thus,  the 
Cochiti  believe  that  the  dead  go  to  Wenaima  in  the  west 
to  become  shiwanna  and  on  the  order  of  Uretsete,  the 
mother  of  the  Indians,  give  rain  to  the  people,  who  make, 
offerings  of  pollen  to  the  spirits  and  impersonate  them) 
in  ceremonial  masquerades.  But,  as  Kroeber  explains  foi  ^ 
the  parallel  Zuni  case,  the  Pueblo  Indians  pray  to  the  dead  / 
as  a  generality  and  there  is  accordingly  no  genuine  equiva-  \ 
lent  of  the  adoration  of  a  particular  ancestor  by  his  sur-  j 


176  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

viving  kin.7  In  other  words,  while  it  would  be  rash  to  say 
that  the  dead  play  no  part  in  North  American  belief,  a 
relative  appraisal  of  the  facts  lends  corroboration  to  the 
general  statement  made  above. 

Our  conclusion,  then,  comes  to  this,  that  in  the  present 
state  of  our  knowledge  world-embracing  schemes  purport¬ 
ing  to  account  for  the  great  variety  of  religious  beliefs  are 
premature;  that  first  of  all  the  facts  themselves  and  their 
distribution  must  be  ascertained  with  a  reasonable  degree 
of  certainty  if  we  are  not  to  build  a  house  of  cards.  Never¬ 
theless,  even  with  the  information  at  hand  it  is  by  no 
means  necessary  to  despair  of  the  possibility  of  establish¬ 
ing  historical  connections,  and  in  some  instances  the  in¬ 
ferences  that  can  safely  be  drawn  are  sufficiently  compre¬ 
hensive  to  satisfy  all  but  the  most  insatiable  synthetic  pal¬ 
ates.  A  few  examples  must  suffice. 

Let  us  consider  for  one  thing  some  North  American  con¬ 
ceptions  of  disease.  Over  a  wide  area  we  find  the  theory 
and  the  practice  recorded  by  Dr.  Walker  among  the  Oglala 
of  South  Dakota: 

All  diseases  are  things  which  get  into  the  body  and  do  violence 

to  it  in  some  way.  The  thing  to  do  is  to  get  these  things  out 
of  the  body. 

This  is  the  dominant  idea  east  of  the  Rockies :  it  is  noted 
for  the  Montauk  of  Long  Island  as  early  as  1761,  for  the 
Yuchi  of  Georgia  and  South  Carolina,  for  the  Natchez  of 
the  Lower  Mississippi,  and  in  the  Plains  area.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  it  is  found  widely  also  in  the  Far  West  and  on 
the  Pacific.  In  California  the  Colorado  River  people  form 
the  only  exception,  and  the  Takelma  of  southwestern  Ore¬ 
gon  also  entertain  the  characteristic  Californian  view  that 


HISTORICAL  SCHEMES 


177 


sickness  is  a  “pain”  lodged  in  the  patient’s  body,  from 
which  it  may  be  extracted  in  the  form  of  a  splinter.  In 
the  Southwest,  the  Zuni  and  Pima  are  known  to  practice 
medicine  on  the  extraction  theory.  But  when  we  turn  to 
the  region  of  the  Pacific  slope  somewhat  farther  north 
than  the  examples  cited,  a  rival  conception  appears,  either 
in  addition  to  the  other  or  possibly  even  as  a  complete 
substitute,  viz.,  the  notion  that  illness  is  caused  by  the  loss, 
usually  theft,  of  the  patient’s  soul  and  that  accordingly  the 
doctor  must  recapture  and  restore  the  kidnaped  vital  prin¬ 
ciple.  Among  the  Chehalis  and  Chinook  of  the  lower  Co¬ 
lumbia  River  this  looms  as  the  major  cause  of  disease. 
The  ghosts  carry  away  the  patient’s  soul,  and  it  is  the 
shaman’s  task  to  recover  it  and  put  it  back  into  the  patient’s 
body.  But  it  is  essential  that  the  truant  shall  not  have 
taken  anything  belonging  to  the  ghosts  or  drunk  of  their 
water,  otherwise  the  sick  man  must  die:  the  doctors  may 
seize  the  soul  and  bring  it  back  but  it  has  shrunk  to  so  small 
a  size  that  it  can  no  longer  fill  its  owner’s  body.  Some¬ 
times  a  sorcerer  abstracts  the  soul  and  hides  it  near  a  corpse 
or  in  some  other  uncanny  place,  and  then  some  other  man 
with  supernatural  power  is  hired  to  find  the  soul  lest  the 
victim  die.  However,  the  doctrine  of  soul-loss  is  com-' 
bined  in  this  region  with  that  of  intrusive  causes :  and  the 
shaman  may  have  to  take  out  the  disease  in  the  form  of 
a  rope  or  pieces  of  bone  or  a  wolf’s  claw.  This  double 
notion  of  soul-loss  and  intrusion  also  occurs  among  the 
Northern  Athabaskans,  the  Coast  Salish  of  Puget  Sound, 
the  northern  coastal  tribes  of  British  Columbia,  and  the 
Eskimo;  while  both  ideas  again  appear  in  the  Southwest 
among  the  Cochiti  of  New  Mexico.8 

It  is  the  apparently  complete  lack  of  the  soul-loss  the¬ 
ory  and  the  correlated  method  of  curing  over  a  vast  and 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


continuous  part  of  the  New  World  that  is  historically  sig¬ 
nificant.  Miss  Lublinski  has  recently  summarized  the 
South  American  data,  and  it  seems  that  intrusion  coupled 
with  extraction  by  blowing  or  suction  alone  occurs  accord¬ 
ing  to  her  records.  Mr.  M.  R.  Harrington  informs  me 
that  Dr.  S.  A.  Barrett  found  soul-capture  in  Ecuador,  which 
would  thus  define  the  southernmost  range  of  the  idea.  Ac¬ 
cording  to  Father  Koppers’s  quite  recent  data  for  the  Fu- 
egians,  however,  an  apparently  spontaneous  wandering  of 
souls  may  figure  as  the  cause  of  illness,  though  the  ex¬ 
traction  of  pathogenic  agents  is  probably  more  common 
than  the  conjuring  back  of  errant  souls  by  means  of  sacred 
chants.  From  a  survey  made  by  Mr.  Forrest  Clements  un¬ 
der  my  direction  it  appears  that  the  Greenland  Eskimo  are 
the  only  North  American  people  of  the  East  who  entertain 
the  theory  of  soul-kidnaping.  Indeed,  with  a  few  excep¬ 
tions  to  be  noted  below,  we  must  go  to  the  Far  West  to 
find  evidence  of  this  notion :  according  to  my  own  inquiries, 
it  is  absent  among  the  Ute  of  Colorado  and  Utah  and 
does  not  turn  up  in  the  Basin  area  until  we  get  to  the  Lemhi 
of  Idaho  and  the  Paviotso  of  northern  Nevada.  Yet  there 
is  not  the  slightest  psychological  reason  for  this  limited 
distribution.  One  and  all,  these  American  aborigines  be¬ 
lieve  in  the  existence  of  the  soul;  some  South  American 
tribes  go  so  far  as  to  have  the  shaman’s  soul  leave  his  body 
to  consult  the  spirits  in  the  course  of  medical  practice.  Yet 
the  idea  that  disease  results  from  soul-snatching  has  not 
been  evolved.9  Why  this  geographically  restricted  occur¬ 
rence  of  a  conception  so  plausible  on  the  uniformly  dis¬ 
tributed  animistic  basis  ? 

The  answer  is  to  be  found  not  in  psychology  but  in  the 
historical  connections  between  America  and  Siberia.  The 
basic  disease-concept  of  America  is  clearly  that  of  intrusion, 


HISTORICAL  SCHEMES 


179 


for  it  occurs  virtually  throughout;  and  even  in  the  North¬ 
east,  where  the  rival  idea  is  most  intensely  developed,  it 
is  almost  everywhere  coupled  with  intrusion.  The  only 
reasonable  supposition,  then,  is  that  locally  soul-theft  has 
supplemented  or  even  ousted  the  ancient  American  theory 
of  disease.  But  this  can  hardly  be  regarded  as  an  autoch¬ 
thonous  product  of  Far  Western  America,  for  while  in  the 
Western  Hemisphere  the  feature  is  almost  wholly  marginal 
it  has  a  considerable  range  in  Siberia,  embracing  the 
Chukchi,  the  Buryat,  of  Mongolic  stock,  around  Lake 
Baikal,  and  the  Turkic  people  of  the  Altai.  Hence  we  are 
probably  dealing  with  a  relatively  late  borrowing  from 
Siberia.10 

The  few  exceptional  instances  ostensibly  contravening 
this  assumption  can  be  readily  explained.  Among  the  Cen¬ 
tral  Algonkians  in  the  Great  Lake  region  the  soul-loss  prin¬ 
ciple  once  more  turns  up.  Thus,  certain  Menomini  wiz¬ 
ards  not  only  extract  bones,  worms,  or  other  pathogenic 
agents  shot  into  the  patient  by  a  sorcerer,  but  on  occasion 
may  cajole  back  a  wandering  soul  by  whistling  and  cause 
it  to  reenter  the  sick  Indian’s  body.  Since  some  of  the 
Central  Algonkians  have  been  in  direct  contact  with  the 
Eskimo,  who  have  demonstrably  carried  the  soul-loss  con¬ 
cept  as  far  east  as  Greenland,  this  sporadic  occurrence  of 
the  trait  in  the  East  is  quite  intelligible.11 

In  America,  then,  intrusion  represents  an  old  cultural 
layer  that  has  been  partly  overlaid  by  the  soul-loss  stratum. 
But  the  question  can  be  studied  from  a  broader  point  of 
view.  Even  in  Siberia  the  Yakut  practice  the  cure  by  ex¬ 
traction,  which  indeed  is  not  unknown  as  a  subsidiary 
method  among  the  Chukchi  themselves;  it  is  coupled  with 
other  theories  in  Africa  and  Malaysia,  and  is  dominant  in 
Australia.  The  chief  facts  of  distribution  are  already 


i8o 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


sketched  in  one  of  Tylor’s  earliest  books.  Tylor,  without 
working  out  the  hypothesis  in  detail,  definitely  espouses  the 
view  that  only  some  historical  connection  can  account  for 
the  resemblances  of  belief  and  practice  as  to  sickness  in 
South  Africa,  Australia,  Borneo,  America,  and  Europe.12 
I  adopt  this  assumption  in  the  following  specific  form. 
The  doctrine  that  disease  is  due  to  a  tangible  intrusive 
body  is  probably  of  very  great  antiquity, — is  a  genuinely 
Palaeolithic  feature.  Originating  somewhere  in  the  Old 
World,  it  was  carried  into  the  New  by  early  immigrants, 
while  in  the  Eastern  Hemisphere  it  likewise  came  to  cover 
an  enormous  stretch  of  territory,  so  that  while  often  super¬ 
seded  by  other  conceptions  it  still  persists  to  some  extent 
in  every  major  area. 

The  definite  proof  that  the  American  and  Siberian  con¬ 
ceptions  discussed  above  had  a  common  origin  emboldens 
us  to  look  for  further  resemblances  between  these  two 
areas.  In  passing  we  may  call  attention  to  the  quite  arbi¬ 
trary  association  of  shamanistic  activity  with  a  tambourine, 
which  links  some  of  our  Eastern  Indians  not  only  with 
Siberia  but  with  Lapland.  Mythological  parallels  between 
Asia  and  America  have  been  repeatedly  pointed  out  by 
Bogoras,  Jochelson,  Boas,  and  others,  and  have  been  gen¬ 
erally  accepted  as  proof  of  historical  contact.  Llere  it  is 
merely  necessary  to  mention  the  remarkable  recurrence 
among  the  Chukchi,  Yukaghir,  Mongolic,  Turkic,  and  Fin¬ 
nic  tribes  of  the  widespread  North  American  “earth-diver” 
motive,  viz.,  the  diving  into  water  for  mud  from  which 
the  earth  is  created.13  At  present,  I  am  interested  in  indi¬ 
cating  more  elusive  instances  of  dissemination.  Thus,  Mrs. 
Benedict  has  shown  that  in  Eastern  North  America  and  the 
Plains  a  revelation  is  normally  sought  by  fasting  and  even 
torture,  but  that  in  the  Ultramontane  area  a  different  idea 


HISTORICAL  SCHEMES 


181 


occurs  widely,  viz.,  the  conception  of  the  vision  “as  un¬ 
sought,  involuntary,  a  thing  of  predisposition”;  and  she 
further  indicates  that  that  is  precisely  the  attitude  among 
the  Koryak  and,  she  might  have  added,  other  Siberians.14 
Another  feature  that  may  be  mentioned  is  the  “berdache” 
custom,  the  notion  that  a  man  as  a  result  of  a 'psychic  ex¬ 
perience  must  change  his  sex  and  thereafter  fulfill  all  the 
duties  of  a  woman.  This  phenomenon  has  been  amply 
described  for  the  Chukchi  in  Bogoras’s  classical  monograph 
and  is  attested  for  a  great  number  of  North  American  tribes,  • 
where  religious  associations  may  or  may  not  be  present. 

A  similar  usage  has  been  reported  from  Borneo,  and  the 
question  arises  whether  we  are  dealing  with  a  phenomenon 
calling  for  an  historical  interpretation  or  with  one  rooted 
in  a  general  tendency  of  human  groups  to  produce  a  certain 
proportion  of  aberrant  individuals.  That  an  abnormality 
of  this  type  might  be  regarded  with  more  or  less  awe  and 
thus  be  linked  with  supernaturalism,  seems  plausible  enough. 

A  satisfactory  answer  to  this  query,  however,  will  be  pos¬ 
sible  only  when  the  distribution  of  the  trait  is  more  defi¬ 
nitely  known. 

Finally — though  I  should  not  like  to  suggest  that  addi¬ 
tional  parallels  are  not  present  in  abundance — the  reveren¬ 
tial  attitude  assumed  toward  the  bear  on  both  sides  of 
Bering  Strait  merits  intensive  comparative  study.  Char¬ 
acteristic  of  the  Asiatic  point  of  view  is  the  Koryak  fes¬ 
tival  in  which  the  slain  bear  is  entreated  not  to  be  angry 
and  is  equipped  with  traveling  provisions,  the  object  of  the 
ceremony  being  to  secure  success  in  future  hunting.  Cor¬ 
responding  ideas  exist  among  the  Yukaghir  and  Lamut, 
while  the  Chukchi  likewise  stand  in  awe  of  the  bear  and 
commonly  refer  to  him  by  such  euphemisms  as  “grand¬ 
father”  or  “the  old  man,”  Now  among  people  so  far  to 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


182 


the  east  as  the  Cree  and  Saulteaux  about  Hudson  Bay  Mr. 
Skinner  has  found  elaborate  practices  connected  with  a 
slain  bear :  the  bones  are  cleaned,  the  skull  is  painted,  kept 
for  months  and  finally  put  into  a  tree,  and  there  are  various 
taboos.  All  this  is  conceived  as  a  prayer  and  offering  to 
the  great  chief  of  the  bears  who  would  otherwise  prevent 
the  Indians  from  killing  any  more  members  of  the  species. 
Even  before  killing  his  game,  the  bear-hunter  would  ad¬ 
dress  him  in  a  conciliatory  speech.  Further  west,  the  As- 
siniboin  made  offerings  to  a  bear’s  head,  praying  for 
future  success  in  bear-killing,  and  conciliatory  prayers  to 
the  carcass  are  noted  for  the  Shuswap,  who  also  put  the 
skulls  of  bears  on  tall  poles.  An  apologetic,  statement  is 
recorded  for  the  Tlingit,  who  paint  the  grizzly’s  head.15 

It  is  thus  not  at  all  improbable  that  central  and  even 
eastern  North  America  can  be  connected  as  regards  a  whole 
series  of  religious  traits  with  central  and  even  western 
Siberia.  This  does  not  mean  that  all  the  features  in  ques¬ 
tion  originated  in  one  area  and  were  thence  disseminated 
in  a  body  to  the  other.  The  simplicity  of  such  an  assump¬ 
tion  has  tempted  many  scholars,  but  historical  phenomena 
are  not  simple  and  a  simpliste  view  is  more  likely  to  be 
wrong  than  right.  We  know  that  the  American  Indians 
borrowed  many  things  from  the  Caucasian  intruder,  but 
we  also  know  that  the  Caucasian  obtained  maize  and  to¬ 
bacco  from  the  aborigines.  We  know  that  the  Chinese 
formed  a  center  for  the  diffusion  of  culture  in  Eastern/ 
Asia,  but  we  also  know, — thanks  to  Dr.  Laufer, — that  they! 
borrowed  more  than  one  element  from  the  ruder  tribes  toi 
the  north  and  to  the  southeast.  Sane  historical  reconstruc- ' 
tion  will  not  assume  as  a  foregone  conclusion  that  historical 
connection  is  equivalent  to  a  steady  irreversible  stream  of 
cultural  traits  from  an  active  initiator  to  a  passive  recipient. 


HISTORICAL  SCHEMES 


183 

That  theory  breaks  down  even  when  material  culture  alone 
is  considered  and  is  obviously  less  tenable  in  matters  of  the 
spirit,  where  man  is  less  dependent  on  the  knowledge  of 
technical  devices. 

It  would  of  course  be  folly  to  deny  the  far-reaching  in¬ 
fluence  of  higher  cultures  on  the  beliefs  of  simpler  peoples 
when  specific  evidence  is  available.  A  superb  illustration 
has  been  cited  by  Kroeber.10  Hepatoscopy,  that  is,  divina¬ 
tion  by  examining  the  liver  of  sacrificial  animals,  occurs 
in  modern  Indonesia,  including  Borneo  and  the  Philippines ; 
but  it  was  a  usage  in  ancient  Babylonia  possibly  as  early 
as  2,000  b.c.  and  spread  thence  both  towards  the  east  and 
the  west.  We  know  that  Indonesia  derived  many  cultural 
features  from  Hindu  and  Chinese  sources ;  hepatoscopy  is 
too  specific  a  trait  to  be  readily  intelligible  as  due  to  a 
repeated  invention;  and  our  earliest  record  of  the  usage 
points  to  Western  Asia.  Hence  we  can  safely  infer  that 
an  ancient  Babylonian  practice  survives  in  modern  Ma¬ 
laysia. 

It  should  be  clear  to  the  reader  that  what  divides  me 
from  the  diffusionist  school  of  Father  Schmidt  is  not  a 
denial  of  diffusion  nor  even  parsimony  in  the  use  of  the 
principle  of  historical  connection,  whether  in  point  of  space 
or  of  time.  The  difference  lies  merely  in  my  insistence  on 
an  incomparably  greater  difficulty  in  the  determination  of 
what  is  fact  in  religion,  on  an  incomparably  greater  com¬ 
plexity  of  the  historical  process  itself  than  Father  Schmidt 
seems  willing  to  admit.  Hence,  I  prefer  to  practice  the 
historical  method  by  tracing  the  distribution  in  time  and 
space  of  traits  with  sharply  defined  individuality  and  to 
establish  sequences  where  the  distribution  is  spatially  con¬ 
tinuous  or  rendered  plausible  by  documentary  evidence  or 
at  least  by  known  ethnographic  principles;  and  the  estab- 


184  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

lishment  of  more  ambitious  schemes  strikes  me  as  distinctly 
premature. 


References 

1  Marett :  IX,  XXVI. 

2  Koppers,  1921:  145,  150,  168,  170. 

3  Witte  in  Anthropos,  1913  :  1162. 

4  Ratlin,  1914  (b)  :  357.  R.  F.  Benedict :  46  f. 

5  R.  F.  Benedict :  20  sq. 

6  Skinner,  1915  (a)  •  *82,  188.  R.  F.  Benedict:  44  f.,  74. 
Dumarest:  151-165. 

7R.  F.  Benedict:  47.  Dumarest:  170-175.  Kroeber,  1916: 
277. 

8  Walker:  163.  Skinner,  1915  (b)  :  67.  Speck:  132.  Swan- 
ton,  1911:  80,  180.  Lowie,  1922:  375,  380.  Kroeber,  1922: 
299.  Sapir,  1907 :  40.  Stevenson :  393,  396,  414.  Russell :  261. 
Boas,  1894:  205  sq.  Morice:  206,  209.  Haeberlin  in  Amer. 
Anth.,  1918:  249-257.  Boas,  1916:  475,  559,  561.  Jenness: 
172  f.  Dumarest:  151-161.  Densmore:  127  sq. 

9Lublinski.  Koppers,  1924:  173,  175. 

10  Bogoras :  463  sq.  Czaplicka :  158,  282,  287. 

11  Skinner,  1915  (a)  :  194  sq. 

12  Tylor,  1865  :  275  sq.  Gutmann :  158. 

33  Jochelson,  1905-1908:  351  f. 

14  R.  F.  Benedict :  27. 

15  Jochelson,  1905-1908:  88.  Bogoras:  325.  Skinner,  1911: 
68  sq.,  162  sq.  Teit:  602.  Lowie,  1909  (b)  •  5^*  Swanton, 
1908:455. 

16  Kroeber,  1923 :  209. 


CHAPTER  IX 


HISTORY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 

Sometimes  the  historical  and  the  psychological  point  of 
view  are  contrasted  as  if  they  were  necessarily  antithetical. 
Nothing  is  further  from  the  truth.  The  psychological  facts 
of  religion  are  the  most  fundamental  that  a  history  of  re¬ 
ligion  can  deal  with;  without  them,  indeed,  such  a  history 
would  be  well-nigh  meaningless.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
equally  true  that  an  insight  into  the  psychology  of  religious 
phenomena  is  impossible  without  reference  to  the  conditions 
that  preceded  and  accompanied  them.  This  is  seen  forth¬ 
with  when  we  consider  some  of  the  definitions  by  poets  or 
philosophers  that  purport  to  penetrate  the  subjective  aspects 
of  religion  without  the  drudgery  of  historical  research. 
Place  the  Roman  poet’s  saying  that  fear  created  the  gods 
alongside  of  the  divine  beings  described  in  the  synthetic 
sketches.  Did  fear  create  the  Crow  visionary’s  equestrian 
patron  who  promises  his  “son”  invulnerability  in  battle?  It 
may  indeed  have  led  the  American  aborigines  to  worship  the 
Thunder,  but  how  could  it  have  evoked  the  characteristic 
association  with  a  bird?  Fear  is  prominent  enough  among 
the  Ekoi;  but  it  is  bound  up  primarily  with  their  ideas  of 
sorcery,  to  a  lesser  extent  with  their  ghosts  and  Nimm,  least 
of  all  with  the  greatest  of  their  deities.  It  is  quite  true  that 
their  supernaturalism  largely  revolves  about  the  practice  of 
sorcery;  but  the  specific  ways  of  using  it  or  averting  its  ef¬ 
fects  are  not  at  all  explained  by  the  simple  psychological 
jnotive  of  fear.  The  Polynesians,  too,  with  their  taboos 

185 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


1 86 

and  formalities  were  prey  to  religious  dread;  yet  this  emo¬ 
tion  seems  hopelessly  inadequate  to  account  for  their  system 
of  beliefs  and  practices.  We  should  not  fare  better  if  we 
substituted  for  the  Roman  epigram  the  German  philosopher’s 
“Der  Wunsch  ist  das  Wesen  der  Religion.”  The  wish,  like 
fear,  can  surely  be  detected  in  religion,  but  it  quite  fails  to 
explain  what  we  should  like  to  understand,  viz.,  the  concrete 
diversity  of  religious  phenomena.  Why  does  a  Crow  try  to 
secure  his  wishes  by  fast  and  prayer,  an  Ekoi  by  bloody  sac¬ 
rifice,  a  Maori  by  a  sacred  incantation?  The  high-sounding 
aphorism  leaves  us  in  the  lurch.  It  and  all  its  congeners 
seem  to  postulate  that  individual  man  reacts  to  the  universe 
religiously  in  response  to  certain  inborn  instincts  and  in  com¬ 
plete  independence  of  time  and  space,  whereas  the  most  ob¬ 
vious  illustrations  from  our  own  culture  suffice  to  demon¬ 
strate  the  shallowness  of  such  an  assumption. 

Thus,  eliminating  all  controversial  discussion  as  to  the 
Gospel  of  St.  John,  let  us  examine  for  a  moment  its  open¬ 
ing  sentence :  “ In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the 
Word  was  with  God,  and  the  Word  was  God.”  If  we  at¬ 
tach  to  the  term  “Word”  its  everyday  English  connotation, 
the  meaning  is  nil,  and  we  cannot  picture  its  author  as  thus 
spontaneously  voicing  his  religious  sentiments.  Certainly 
the  instinct  of  fear  and  the  craving  for  wish-fulfillment  help 
us  not  a  jot.  It  is  otherwise  when  we  turn  from  random 
psychologizing  to  history. 

Our  “Word”  then  ;turns  out  to  be  the  equivalent  of  the 
Latin  Verbum,  Greek  Logos;  and  this  Greek  term  not 
merely  designated  a  vocable  but  stood  in  Hellenic  philosophi¬ 
cal  literature  for  the  rational  order  of  the  universe,  the  ra¬ 
tional  principle  immanent  in  the  cosmos.  Introduced  by 
Heraclitus  (ca.  500-450  b.c.)  and  adopted  by  the  Stoics,  the 
concept  was  assimilated  by  Philo,  a  Jewish  thinker  bora  in 


HISTORY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY  187 

Alexandria  about  30  or  20  b.c.,  who  absorbed  features 
of  Greek  metaphysics  while  still  retaining  his  faith  in  the 
God  of  the  Old  Testament.  He  harmonized  the  two  views 
by  characterizing  the  Logos  as  indeed  a  creative  principle  but 
as  one  subordinate  to  God.  On  the  one  hand,  it  appears  as 
a  mere  faculty  of  God,  by  which  He  thought  out  the  nature 
of  the  universe;  on  the  other  hand,  as  a  being  derived  from 
God  and  carrying  His  influence  into  the  world.  Philo’s 
Logos  is  of  course  not  identical  with  that  of  the  Gospel, 
where  it  is  not  a  secondary  but  a  second  Divine  Being,  not 
an  intermediary  but  a  Mediator  uniting  divine  and  human 
nature  in  one  person.  Yet  it  is  in  a  sense  an  anticipatory 
conception,  and  a  conception  identical  with  that  of  St.  John 
but  as  yet  unlabeled  appears  among  his  Christian  predeces¬ 
sors,  as  when  Jesus  figures  as  an  “image  of  the  invisible 
God”  (Ep.  to  Col.,  1,  15),  as  his  Son,  “whom  he  hath  ap¬ 
pointed  heir  of  all  things,  by  whom  also  he  made  the  worlds” 
(Ep.  to  Heb.,  1,  1-2).  As  the  Catholic  Encyclopedia  puts  it, 
nothing  was  lacking  but  the  name  “Logos.”  In  short,  the 
initial  sentence  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  translates  these  earlier 
expressions  into  the  nomenclature  of  Greek  speculation,  bor¬ 
rowing  a  term  there  used  for  a  comparable  concept.  With¬ 
out  a  knowledge  of  the  historical  relations  of  Hellenic  to 
Western  Asiatic  thought,  St.  John’s  opening  sentence  re¬ 
mains  a  psychological  enigma,  but  the  puzzle  is  instantly 
solved  when  the  historical  facts  are  elucidated. 

The  same  point  could  be  demonstrated  for  other  parts  of 
the  Johannine  writings.  An  important  purpose  of  them  was 
to  safeguard  the  Christian  faith  against  the  attacks  of  here¬ 
tics,  and  specifically  against  the  teachings  of  Gnosticism. 
Thus,  St.  John’s  assertion  that  a  claim  to  sinlessness  is  er¬ 
roneous  seems  to  be  not  an  abstract  proposition  laid  down 
regardless  of  all  temporal  circumstances  but  a  rebuke  admin- 


1 88  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

istered  to  the  hostile  faction  that  associated  purity  from  sin 
with  the  gnosis,  or  intuitive  spiritual  insight,  characteristic 
of  their  sect.1 

But  enough  has  been  said  to  suggest  the  interdependence 
of  psychological  and  historical  factors  on  higher  levels  of 
civilization.  In  consonance  with  the  plan  of  this  work  we 
turn  now  to  a  fuller  consideration  of  two  remarkable  ex¬ 
amples  of  fairly  well-known  primitive  cults,  the  Ghost  Dance 
of  our  Plains  Indians,  and  the  Peyote  religion  of  the  Winne¬ 
bago  of  Wisconsin  and  Nebraska.  Apart  from  illustrating 
my  main  point,  both  are  interesting  as  illustrations  of  a 
proselytizing  tendency  that  is  on  the  whole  very  rare  on  the 
primitive  level. 


The  Ghost  Dance 

In  1890  a  Martian  visitor  to  the  Teton  (Western  Dakota 
or  “Sioux”)  reservations  of  South  Dakota  might  have  sum¬ 
marized  his  outstanding  impressions  in  some  such  terms  as 
'  the  following : 

At  frequent  intervals,  usually  once  a  week,  these  people 
undergo  solemn  preparations  for  ceremonial  activity.  They 
will  fast  for  twenty-four  hours,  purify  themselves  at  sun¬ 
rise  by  a  vapor  bath,  and  are  then  decorated  by  some  of  their 
great  men,  such  as  Short-bull  or  Sitting-bull,  who  paint  each 
person’s  forehead,  face  and  cheeks  with  a  circle,  cross,  or 
crescent.  Next  every  one  dons  a  shirt  likewise  ornamented 
with  symbolic  figures.  Finally  the  whole  community  to  the 
number  of  several  hundred  adults  gather  round  a  tree  hung 
with  streamers,  cloth,  feathers,  and  what  not.  The  leaders  are 
seated  at  the  foot  of  the  tree,  and  before  anything  vital  hap¬ 
pens  a  young  woman  within  the  circle  lets  fly  four  bone¬ 
headed  arrows  towards  the  cardinal  directions  and  remains 


HISTORY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY  189 

standing  by  the  tree  with  a  redstone  pipe  extended  toward 
the  west.  There  follows  a  plaintive  chant  by  the  whole  as¬ 
sembly,  whereupon  food  is  passed  and  shared  by  every  in¬ 
dividual.  Then  at  a  signal  by  the  leaders  all  rise,  sing  the 
initial  song,  standing  motionless  with  hands  stretched  out 
toward  the  west,  and  join  hands.  Soon  other  songs  are  in¬ 
toned,  the  dance  begins,  and  the  steps  are  accelerated  till  the 
performers  are  going  round  at  topspeed,  bodies  swaying  and 
hands  tightly  clasping  the  neighbors’.  Now  a  woman  with 
hair  disheveled,  staggers  from  the  ring,  panting,  groaning 
wildly,  and  waving  her  arms,  and  soon  falls  unconscious  and 
twitching  to  the  ground.  Now  a  man  follows  suit,  then  a 
second  woman,  and  still  another.  After  a  while  possibly  a 
hundred  are  lying  on  the  ground.  As  each  recovers  from 
his  swoon,  he  is  brought  to  the  center  where  he  makes  some 
statement  to  the  master  of  ceremonies,  who  heralds  it  to 
the  crowd.  At  last  they  all  shake  their  blankets  and  disperse. 

If  our  hypothetical  Martian  knows  the  language  of  his 
hosts  or  commands  the  services  of  an  interpreter,  these  procla¬ 
mations,  together  with  the  songs  of  the  dancers  and  Short- 
bull’s  harangues  to  the  crowd  will  give  him  some  notion  of 
what  ideas  are  associated  with  the  strange  performance  he  is 
witnessing.  The  Indians  are  hoping  to  be  reestablished  as 
•  supreme  rulers  of  the  country.  Their  white  oppressors  are 
to  be  overwhelmed, — smothered  by  a  terrific  landslide  or 
destroyed  by  whirlwinds;  their  firearms  will  be  powerless 
against  the  Teton,  whose  painted  shirts  render  them  invul¬ 
nerable.  The  spirits  of  all  the  dead  Indians  are  returning 
to  reinhabit  the  earth  and  are  driving  immense  herds  of  buf¬ 
falo  before  them.  The  dancers  who  have  fallen  into  a 
trance  see  visions  in  earnest  of  this  glorious  destiny.  The 
maiden  over  there  has  seen  her  dead  mother  and  is  now  im¬ 
ploring  her  to  return  and  tend  her  orphaned  infant.  That 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


190 

man  has  taken  part  once  more  in  an  old-fashioned  buffalo 
hunt  and  beheld  the  scouts  dashing  back  to  proclaim  the 
sighting  of  a  herd.  Yonder  hag  has  helped  in  making  pemmi- 
can  after  a  successful  chase.  A  dozen  men  and  women  have 
seen  the  spirit  of  a  deceased  kinsman,  who  suddenly  van¬ 
ished  in  the  guise  of  a  beast  or  bird.  But  in  order  to  see 
the  spirits  and  bring  them  back  for  good,  and  to  destroy  the 
enemy,  it  is  necessary  to  dance  the  Ghost  Dance  and  to  dis¬ 
card  the  gewgaws  and  trappings  of  the  white  man. 

Now,  how  much  of  all  this  is  amenable  to  a  simple  psycho¬ 
logical  interpretation?  Very,  very  little.  Of  course,  certain 
general  motives  are  involved  here  as  they  are  in  every  hu¬ 
man  activity.  Naturally  enough,  men  do  long  to  see  their 
departed  kin  and  resent  the  intrusions  of  foreign  invaders. 
But  such  generalities  not  only  leave  the  greater  part  of  the 
story  unexplained,  but  become  progressively  less  illuminating 
as  our  visitor  extends  his  inquiries  in  time  and  space.  Why 
has  the  desire  for  union  with  departed  relatives  never  been 
voiced  by  the  Teton  prior  to  1890,  at  least,  never  in  com¬ 
parable  fashion?  Why  are  they  rising  in  armed  rebellion 
against  the  United  States,  while  the  Arapaho  and  Cheyenne 
are  content  to  leave  the  destruction  of  the  whites  to  the 
supernatural  powers  of  the  universe,  nay,  even  deprecate  the 
use  of  the  painted  shirt  because  it  is  a  symbol  of  war?  Why 
are  the  pipe  and  the  dancers’  hands  extended  toward  the 
west?  Is  it  perchance  because  that  is  the  home  of  the  setting 
sun  and  the  land  of  the  dead?  (Our  visitor  may  have  fa¬ 
miliarized  himself  with  the  theories  of  sublunary  mytholo- 
gists.)  These  questions  and  many  others  are  unanswerable 
or  answerable  only  in  demonstrably  incorrect  fashion  so 
long  as  we  conceive  of  the  Ghost  Dance  as  a  direct  religious 
response  by  such  and  such  an  individual  or  tribe.  But  they 


'HISTORY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 


191 

can  be  illuminated  at  once  if  we  resort  to  the  sane  method 
of  historical  reconstruction.  Let  us  begin  with  the  last-men¬ 
tioned  query. 

The  pipe  and  the  dancers’  hands  are  extended  towards  the 
west  because  it  is  from  that  direction,  viz.,  from  Nevada, 
that  the  Teton  have  received  the  new  ceremony  and  its 
doctrine,  which  was  promulgated  about  the  beginning  of 
1889  by  Wovoka  (“Jack:  Wilson”)  of  the  little-known  Pavi- 
otso  tribe,  otherwise  known  as  the  Northern  Paiute.  It 
seems  that  at  the  time  of  a  solar  eclipse,  probably  on  Jan¬ 
uary  1,  1889,  Wovoka  fell  asleep  during  the  daytime  and 
was  taken  up  to  the  other  world,  where  he  saw  God  and  all 
the  dead  of  long  ago,  who  were  happy  and'  young,  playing 
at  their  old  games  and  engaged  in  their  old  occupations  in  a 
land  of  joy  and  plenty.  After  showing  him  everything,  God 
bade  him  return  with  a  message  of  peace,  good-will  and 
moral  exhortation.  If  the  people  obeyed  instructions,  they 
were  to  be  reunited  with  their  dead  friends.  They  were  to 
practice  the  dance  revealed  to  Wovoka  in  his  vision.  “By 
performing  this  dance  at  intervals,  for  five  consecutive  days 
each  time,  they  would  secure  this  happiness  to  themselves 
and  hasten  the  event.”  Finally  he  was  given  control  over 
the  elements  by  means  of  five  songs,  each  with  a  distinctive 
effect  on  the  atmosphere. 

The  first  point  of  contrast  with  the  Teton  variant  of  the 
cult  that  strikes  us  in  Wovoka’s  revelation  is  the  genial  at¬ 
titude  assumed  towards  the  whites.  This  may  indeed  have 
been  modified  in  occasional  audiences  as  a  concession  to  In¬ 
dians  from  hostile  tribes,  but  everything  goes  to  show  that 
primarily  Wovoka  brought  a  gospel  of  universal  brother¬ 
hood.  This  is  borne  out  not  only  by  his  statements  to  Mr. 
Mooney,  which  might  be  construed  as  designed  to  curry 


192 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


favor  with  a  white  man,  but  by  the  report  of  an  early  Chey¬ 
enne  delegate,  which  must  be  considered  free  from  this 
source  of  adulteration: 

He  also  told  us  that  all  our  dead  were  to  be  resurrected; 
that  they  were  all  to  come  back  to  earth.  ...  He  spoke  to  us 
about  fighting  and  said  that  was  bad  and  we  must  keep 
from  it;  that  the  earth  was  to  be  all  good  hereafter,  and  we 
must  all  be  friends  with  one  another.  .  .  .  He  told  us  not  to 
quarrel  or  fight  or  strike  each  other,  or  shoot  one  another ;  that 
the  whites  and  Indians  were  to  be  all  one  people. 

Wovoka’s  friendliness,  or  at  least  freedom  from  fanatical 
hatred,  for  the  whites  is  further  indicated  by  his  attitude  to¬ 
ward  the  elements  of  our  material  culture.  While  the  Teton 
made  a  deliberate  attempt  to  dispense  with  the  enemy’s  arti¬ 
facts,  even  to  the  point  of  not  using  beads  for  decorative 
purposes,  the  Paviotso  prophet  did  not  scruple  to  wear  good 
trade  clothes  and  a  white  man’s  hat. 

Another  point  of  considerable  interest  is  that,  at  least  oc¬ 
casionally,  Wovoka  pretended  to  be  Christ  returning  after 
hundreds  of  years  to  renew  the  world,  which  was  getting 
too  old,  and  to  instruct  mankind  once  more. 

All  this  is  quite  intelligible  from  Wovoka’s  antecedents. 
As  a  young  lad  he  began  to  work  for  a  white  farmer,  David 
Wilson,  and  because  of  his  close  attachment  to  the  family, 
he  was  dubbed  “Jack  Wilson.”  Through  this  contact  he  evi¬ 
dently  acquired  not  only  a  smattering  of  English  but  also 
some  notions  of  Christianity,  possibly  enlarged  by  other 
white  acquaintances ;  and  these  associations  explain  both  cer¬ 
tain  specific  features  in  the  original  Ghost  Dance  code  and 
also  its  freedom  from  racial  antipathy. 

Why  the  Teton  so  strangely  altered  the  harmless  concep¬ 
tions  of  Wovoka,  will  be  discussed  below.  For  the  present 


HISTORY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY  193 

it  is  important  to  note  that  we  have  not  yet  ascended  to  the 
fountainhead  of  the  Ghost  cult.  Wovoka  had  a  forerunner 
in  the  person  of  his  possible  father  and  probable  kinsman 
Tavibo,  whose  appearance  dates  back  to  about  1870.  As  to 
his  precise  doctrine,  especially  as  regards  the  prospective 
destruction  of  the  whites,  there  is  conflicting  evidence.  But 
he  certainly  went  into  trances  and  declared  that  the  spirits 
of  the  dead  were  about  to  return  to  earth,  and  that  game 
animals  together  with  the  ancient  life  were  to  be  restored. 
In  one  version  he  is  even  credited  with  a  definitely  ethical 
doctrine.  However  this  may  be,  there  is  manifestly  a  his¬ 
torical  connection  between  the  elder  and  the  younger  of  the 
two  related  prophets,  and  the  Ghost  Dance  of  the  Plains 
tribes  is  thus  ultimately  traceable  to  the  preachings  of  a 
Paviotso  antedating  their  adoption  of  the  ceremony  by  nearly 
twenty  years.  Here  the  question  naturally  obtrudes  itself, 
why  the  Teton,  instead  of  waiting  for  Wovoka,  did  not  wel¬ 
come  the  earlier  Messianic  teaching. 

Before  attempting  to  solve  this  problem,  it  will  be  worth 
while  noting  a  point  that  eluded  Mr.  Mooney.  It  was  not 
by  sheer  whim  or  accident  that  Wovoka  set  the  period  of  the 
dance  at  five  days  and  acquired  five  songs  for  controlling  the 
weather.  As  no  reader  of  that  half-educated  Paviotso, 
Sarah  Winnemucca,  can  fail  to  observe,  five  is  the  mystic 
number  of  her  tribe  as  definitely  as  four  is  that  of  the  Plains 
area.  Hence,  in  so  far  as  the  Prairie  tribes  adopted  the  idea, 
they  were  acting  under  the  prestige  suggestion  of  an  alien 
leader,  who  was  himself  quite  spontaneously  bowing  to  the 
accepted  folkways  of  his  own  people. 

When  we  set  side  by  side  the  beliefs  and  observances  that 
constituted  the  Ghost  cult  of  the  Paviotso  with  those  charac¬ 
teristic  of  the  Teton  variant,  the  differences  are  more  strik¬ 
ing  than  the  resemblances.  Let  us  turn  first  of  all  to  two 


194 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


closely  connected  queries :  Why  did  the  Teton  fail  to  adopt 
the  gospel  of  1870  when  they  espoused  with  such  ardor  the 
gospel  of  1889?  And  why  did  they  alter  not  merely  lesser 
details,  but  the  very  spirit  of  Wovoka’s  teaching?  In  order 
to  solve  these  problems  it  is  necessary  to  consider  the  change 
in  outward  circumstances  effected  among  the  Western  Sioux 
during  the  intervening  periods.  In  1870  they  were  still  able 
to  subsist  in  large  measure  on  the  products  of  the  chase;  by 
1889  the  virtual  extinction  of  the  buffalo  had  reduced  them 
and  neighboring  tribes  to  a  precarious  economic  existence. 
But  the  Teton  were  worse  off  than  other  Plains  Indians  be¬ 
cause  of  a  variety  of  special  conditions.  Not  only  had  they 
lost  their  favorite  game  animal,  but  for  two  successive  years 
they  had  suffered  a  failure  of  crops,  had  seen  their  live¬ 
stock  depleted  by  disease,  and  their  Government  rations  ma¬ 
terially  reduced,  so  that  they  were  literally  threatened  with 
starvation.  Add  to  this  a  series  of  epidemics  that  wrought 
havoc  in  their  midst,  the  chafing  of  a  nation  of  warriors 
under  the  encroachments  of  whites,  the  recollection  of  recent 
conflicts  with  the  Government  and  of  various  grievances 
against  their  official  guardians :  and  the  intense  emotional 
stress  predisposing  a  people  to  yearn  for  deliverance  from 
their  ills  is  amply  accounted  for.  In  1870  all  these  condi¬ 
tions  were  either  lacking  or  much  less  acute,  and  the  soil  was 
therefore  but  indifferently  prepared  for  the  reception  of  a 
Messianic  faith.  But  even  apart  from  the  inevitable  differ¬ 
ence  in  psychological  attitude,  there  were  circumstances  that 
would  greatly  impede  the  rapid  dissemination  of  Tavibo’s 
teachings  :  the  means  of  transportation  that  enabled  delegates 
from  a  thousand  miles  away  to  make  their  long  pilgrimages 
to  Wovoka  were  still  in  their  infancy,  and  the  number  of 
educated  Indians  who  might  spread  knowledge  of  a  new 
revelation  in  Nevada  by  writing  to  remote  tribes  was  ex- 


HISTORY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 


195 

tremely  small.  It  is  not  at  all  unlikely  that  in  Tavibo’s  day 
not  a  single  Teton  had  ever  heard  of  the  Paviotso.  But  even 
if  the  Paviotso  were  known,  their  ability  to  propagandize 
the  proud  Plains  Indians  in  a  relatively  normal  state  was 
more  than  problematical.  Could  anything  good  come  out  of 
the  country  of  the  seed-gathering  kinsmen  of  the  “Bad 
Lodges,”  as  even  the  more  eastern  Shoshoneans  were  con¬ 
temptuously  designated  on  the  Prairie?  It  was  otherwise 
with  the  Teton  when  decimated  by  disease,  deprived  of  their 
livelihood,  and  incensed  against  the  oppressor  to  the  point 
of  clutching  at  any  hope  of  salvation. 

With  this  major  difference  of  initial  attitude  interpreted, 
various  special  features  are  directly  explicable  from  a  knowl¬ 
edge  of  Dakota  ethnography.  When  the  Teton  introduced 
decorated  shirts  to  ward  off  the  enemy’s  bullets,  they  were 
merely,  as  Wissler  has  demonstrated,  reviving  the  hoary 
custom  of  averting  darts  by  the  designs  on  shields,  for  in 
either  case  the  protective  virtue  was  believed  to  lie  in  the 
decoration,  supposedly  revealed  in  each  instance  by  a  super¬ 
natural  power.  Why  did  the  Dakota,  unlike  the  originators 
of  the  ceremony,  begin  with  a  sweat-bath?  Because  while 
among  the  Paviotso  the  sudatory  was  of  little  significance, 
the  Teton  regarded  it  as  a  regular  preliminary  to  any  rite 
dedicated  to  the  major  gods.  Why  did  the  Dakota  erect  a 
tree  in  the  middle  of  the  circle  when  no  such  feature  ap¬ 
peared  in  Nevada?  Probably  because  in  two  of  their  great¬ 
est  festivals,  the  Sun  Dance  and  the  Round  Dance,  a  tree 
was  erected  in  the  middle  of  the  site.  Again,  the  visions  of 
buffalo,  scouting-parties,  and  pemmican-making  were  faith¬ 
ful  reflections  of  normal  Plains  Indian  life  that  were  mani¬ 
festly  impossible  to  natives  of  the  Basin  area.  The  de¬ 
parture  of  spirit  visitants  in  animal  shape  is  once  more  a 
trait  highly  characteristic  of  Dakota  visions  generally  but 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


196 

never  recorded  for  the  Paviotso.  In  this  connection  another 
difference  may  be  noted :  while  in  Nevada  the  Prophet  him¬ 
self  was  the  only  one  to  go  into  a  trance,  the  Teton  and  some 
other  Plains  tribes  developed  the  mass  ecstasies  described 
above,  another  possible  influence  of  the  Sun  Dance  pattern. 

As  for  the  Christian  elements  of  Wovoka’s  revelation, 
they  completely  evaporated  on  Dakota  soil.  There  is  no 
trace  there  of  the  ethical  doctrines  proclaimed  by  the  Prophet. 
Already  familiar  through  contact  with  missionaries  with  the 
notion  of  the  crucified  Christ,  the  Teton  did  not  indeed  spurn 
it  but  subordinated  it  to  their  own  desires,  corrupting  it  into 
the  conception  of  an  avenger  of  their  wrongs.  He  merely 
served  the  function  of  any  one  of  their  own  guardian  spirits. 
Indeed,  he  was  very  far  from  supplanting  the  figures  of 
their  pantheon;  the  protective  shirt  designs  recorded  by 
Wissler  demonstrate  the  old  reliance  on  Sun,  Thunderbird, 
and  their  mates. 

In  short,  the  Teton  Ghost  Dance  involved  essentially  the 
assimilation  of  a  single  novel  idea,  that  of  the  returning  dead 
and  th^j^storajia^  oned  life^jn  consonance 

with  the  preexisting  Teton  system  of  religion ;  andTthe  total 
result  was  applied  to  the  solution  of  the  critical  situation 
in  which  they  then  found  themselves. 

This  last  statement  may  be  extended  to  other  tribes. 
Though  not  animated  by  the  fanatical  hatred  for  the  whites 
nourished  by  the  Western  Dakota,  the  Arapaho,  Cheyenne, 
and  Kiowa — to  mention  only  a  few  cases — had  enough 
grounds  for  discontent  in  the  inevitable  conflicts  with  the  in¬ 
truders  to  welcome  a  revelation  that  promised  freedom  from 
their  yoke.  They  were  ready  to  accept  the  leadership  of  an 
alien  prophet,  nay,  in  their  exaltation  might  raise  him  to 
divine  dignity  and  invest  with  a  halo  of  sanctity  even  such 
trivialities  as  the  ochre  he  used  to  decorate  the  faces  of 


HISTORY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 


197 


dancers,  or  might  attach  veritably  sacramental  value  to  pinon 
nuts  from  Nevada,  which  in  that  country  were  a  common 
enough  article  of  diet.  It  was  indeed  possible  for  the  Ghost 
Dance  to  supersede  all  the  older  ceremonies  of  the  Cheyenne 
and  Arapaho, — but  only  because  they  largely  retained  the 
ancient  ceremonial  pattern ,  automatically  molding  the  new 
cult  into  harmony  with  it.  Seven  was  one  of  the  mystic 
numbers  of  the  Arapaho;  and  the  apostle  of  that  tribe  would 
ordain  seven  priests,  or  seven  of  each  sex,  to  superintend  the 
dance.  It  had  been  customary  to  make  ceremonial  pipe-of¬ 
ferings  to  the  sun,  the  earth,  the  fire,  and  the  four  cardinal 
points,  and  this  usage  was  followed  in  Arapaho  song  re¬ 
hearsals.  In  Plains  Indian  theory  every  mode  of  decoration 
for  a  ceremony  was  the  result  of  inspiration,  and  the  Ghost 
Dancers  strictly  adhered  to  this  conception.  A  certain  flat 
pipe  was  the  Arapaho  holy  of  holies,  and  it  held  its  place  de¬ 
spite  the  new  cult,  entering  into  some  of  the  new  chants. 
The  Thunderbird  was  one  of  the  great  figures  in  Plains  In¬ 
dian  religion,  and  so  far  from  abjuring  it,  the  Ghost  Danc¬ 
ers  frequently  wore  its  effigy  on  their  heads.  In  short,  the 
Plains  Indians  gave  up  next  to  nothing  that  was  really  vital 
in  their  old  faith;  and  what  they  adopted  could  be  easily 
made  to  fit  into  the  system  of  inherited  belief.  The  basic 
conception  of  a  revelation  from  a  supernatural  power  was 
one  of  the  most  deep-rooted  traditions  of  their  culture. 
Whether  Wovoka  was  himself  divine  or  merely  the  recipi¬ 
ent  of  divine  blessings,  there  was  nothing  shocking  to  their 
§ense  of  verisimilitude  in  his  dispensation  of  miraculous  fa¬ 
vors.  Since  the  quest  of  a  vision  was  practically  universal, 
at  least  among  the  men  of  the  Plains  area,  the  striking  fact 
that  many  individuals  experienced  visions,  which  in  Nevada 
were  restricted  to  the  Prophet  himself,  is  at  once  intelligible. 
It  was  natural  for  the  Pawnee  shamans  to  interpret  all  the 


198  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

relevant  phenomena  as  merely  revivals  of  the  traditional 
type  of  revelations  with  a  mere  modification  of  content; 
and  there  is  little  doubt  that  that  was  essentially  the  view 
held  throughout  the  region.  Even  the  extensive  employment 
of  hypnotism  in  some  of  the  tribes  had  its  parallel  in  earlier 
practices.  Of  the  Crow  we  know  that  the  conductor  of  the 
Sun  Dance  would  deliberately  put  the  pledger  of  the  cere¬ 
mony  into  a  trance  if  mere  dancing  before  the  sacred  doll 
failed  to  produce  the  desired  result;  and  similar  customs 
were  doubtless  found  among  neighboring  tribes  as  well. 

Let  us  now  revert  once  more  to  the  basic  question,  in  how 
far  the  Teton  cult  as  practiced  in  1890  is  intelligible  apart 
from  the  historical  setting  described  above.  In  other  words, 
m  how  far  could  any  individual  separated  from  those  specific 
conditions  be  expected  to  express  his  relations  to  the  super¬ 
natural  in  like  fashion?  The  answer  is,  Not  at  all.  Even 
disregarding  all  matters  of  ritual  detail,  we  cannot  fail  to 
recognize  that  the  receptiveness  toward  Wovoka’s  message 
and  its  peculiar  elaboration  with  the  stressing  of  the  trance 
idea,  were  directly  dependent  on  the  Plains  Indian  world¬ 
view.  In  the  Ghost  Dance  as  it  developed  in  the  Prairie  re¬ 
gion  possibly  three  factors  stand  out  above  the  rest,— the 
return  of  the  buffalo,  the  return  of  the  dead,  and  the  de¬ 
struction  of  the  whites.  Of  these,  the  first  and  last  were  in 
principle '  of  old  standing.  Rites  for  luring  the  herds  of 
game  animals  towards  the  encampments  in  times  of  famine 
were  prominent  among  most  of  the  Plains  groups.  Simi¬ 
larly  the  destruction  of  the  enemy  through  supernatural 
sanction  was  a  well-established  principle,  so  that  no  Crow 
war  party  was  organized  without  a  corresponding  revelation. 
The  economic  plight  of  the  Plains  people  was  only  a  particu¬ 
larly  accentuated  instance  of  a  situation  with  which  they  had 
often  had  to  contend  in  the  old  days;  and  the  whites  were 


199 


HISTORY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 

only  a  particular  type  of  especially  obnoxious  enemy.  Even 
as  early  as  1881,  eight  years  before  Wovoka  s  name  had 
traveled  eastward,  a  Kiowa  shaman  had  sought  to  recall  the 
buffalo,  prescribing  to  his  people  a  mode  of  ceremonial  con¬ 
duct  revealed  in  a  dream.  In  1887  the  Crow  prophet  Wraps- 
up-his-tail  laid  claim  to  a  vision  that  would  enable  him  to 
drive  the  whites  from  the  country.  In  the  same  year  a  sec¬ 
ond  Kiowa  shaman  not  only  pronounced  himself  heir  to  his 
forerunner’s  powers  but  declared  that  since  the  whites  had 
caused  the  destruction  of  the  buffalo  he  would  destroy  them 

all. 

There  was  a  Plains  prehistory,  as  it  were,  to  the  Ghost 
Dance,  and  that  prehistory  made  the  cult  different  from  what 
it  would  otherwise  have  been  anywhere  else  in  the  universe. 

But  is  not  at  least  the  longing  for  the  deceased  a  phe¬ 
nomenon  of  universal  occurrence  and  a  human  motive  that 
requires  no  historical  interpretation?  Undoubtedly,  but  alas ! 
it  fails  to  explain  the  case  at  issue.  For  that  supposedly 
abiding  motive  had  never  before  produced  the  conception  of 
a  re-peopling  of  the  world  by  the  spirits  of  the  dead.  The 
Plains  Indians  were  for  the  most  part  conspicuously  little 
interested  in  the  hereafter,  and  it  required  the  suggestion  of 
Wovoka,  established  and  fostered  through  the  circumstances 
already  sketched,  to  implant  his  eschatology  among  these 
tribes.  In  other  words,  a  Teton  unaffected  by  Wovoka’ s 
evangelists  might  have  yearned  for  a  sight  of  the  dead  in 
1890  as  he  might  have  done  in  1790  without  more  than 
dreaming  of  a  visit  to  the  land  of  spirits.  If  in  1890  such 
dream  experiences  were  linked  with  the  expectation  of  a 
definite  reunion,  not  through  the  dreamer’s  journey  to  the 
dead  but  through  their  reentrance  into  this  world,  it  was 
simply  because  by  historical  accident  the  gospel  of  Wovoka, 
itself  the  resultant  of  Paviotso  and  Caucasian  culture,  that 


200  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

is,  of  another  historical  accident,  had  reached  Dakota  ter¬ 
ritory.2 


The  Peyote  Cult 

An  excellent  illustration  of  my  thesis  is  provided  by  the 
history  of  the  Peyote  cult,  which  in  several  of  our  Western 
tribes  has  manifested  a  strong  tendency  to  supersede  the  an¬ 
cient  ritualism.  The  peyote,  incorrectly  called  “mescal,”  is 
a  species  of  small  cactus  that  grows  along  the  lower  Rio 
Grande  and  in  Mexico.  It  resembles  a  radish  in  size  and 
shape  and  has  a  white  blossom,  which  is  displaced  by  a  tuft 
of  white  down.  North  of  the  Mexican  boundary  only  the 
top  is  used,  being  sliced  and  dried  to  form  the  “button,” 
while  in  Mexico  the  whole  of  the  plant  is  sliced,  dried  and 
used  in  decoction.  The  Peyote  worship  centers  in  the  eating 
of  the  button  or  drinking  of  its  infusion.  Professor  Kroe- 
ber,  who  partook  of  peyote  among  the  Arapaho,  thus  de¬ 
scribes  its  effects  : 

It  affects  the  heart,  produces  muscular  lassitude,  is  a  strong 
stimulant  of  the  nervous  system,  and  has  a  marked  effect  on 
the  geneial  feeling  of  the  person,  giving  the  impression  of 
stimulating  especially  the  intellectual  faculties.  In  most  cases 
it  produces  visions  of  a  kaleidoscopic  nature.  Its  emotional 
effect  varies  greatly,  being  in  some  cases  depressing  or  intensely 
disagreeable ;  in  others,  which  are  the  more  frequent,  producing 
quiet  but  intense  exaltation.  There  is  little  subsequent  reaction. 

Now  in  perhaps  the  majority  of  cases  this  modern  faith 
clearly  combines  Christian  elements  (including  such  features 
as  Bible-reading,  testimony,  puritanical  ethics)  with  the 
adoiation  of  the  cactus  plant.  Yet  it  is  not  a  concise  his¬ 
torical  formula  any  more  than  a  psychological  formula  that 


HISTORY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 


201 


really  sheds  light  on  the  psychological  processes  involved,  but 
only  a  painstaking  consideration  of  each  step  in  the  his¬ 
torical  development,  such  as  has  been  furnished  by  Dr.  Paul 
Radin  for  the  Winnebago.3 

Since  the  cactus  in  question  is  indigenous  only  in  the 
South,  the  Winnebago  naturally  derived  its  cult  from  that 
direction.  John  Rave,  who  introduced  the  new  faith  among 
his  people,  had  learned  to  eat  peyote  while  visiting  an  Okla¬ 
homa  tribe  in  1893-94.  He  was  a  member  of  the  important 
Bear  sib,  but  personally  had  a  bad  character  as  a  shiftless 
drunkard.  When  visiting  in  the  South  he  was  in  a  very 
unhappy  frame  of  mind,  for  he  had  recently  lost  his  wife 
and  his  children.  At  the  invitation  of  his  hosts,  he  ate  peyote 
and  saw  some  horrible  monsters  that  threatened  to  devour  or 
spear  him.  To  quote  his  own  words : 

There  seemed  to  be  no  possible  escape  for  me.  Then  sud¬ 
denly  it  occurred  to  me,  “Perhaps  it  is  this  peyote  that  is  doing 
this  thing  to  me  ?”  “Help  me,  O  medicine,  help  me !  It  is  you 
who  are  doing  this  and  you  are  holy !  It  is  not  these  frightful 
visions  that  are  causing  this.  I  should  have  known  that  you 
were  doing  it.  Help  me !”  Then  my  suffering  stopped.  “As 
long  as  the  earth  shall  last,  that  long  will  I  make  use  of  you, 
O  medicine!” 

Rave  ate  more  peyote  and  saw  God  and  the  morning-star, 
also  his  dead  wife  and  children  and  other  kinsfolk,  and  all 
seemed  well.  Then  he  ejaculated,  “Ah!  Peyote,  you  are 
holy.  All  that  is  connected  with  you  I  should  like  to  know ; 
for  now  I  first  realize  what  holiness  is.” 

On  his  return  he  cured  himself  of  a  disease  of  old  stand¬ 
ing  and  likewise  his  new  wife,  who  had  also  suffered  from 
the  same  affliction.  He  further  treated  several  other  people 
with  the  aid  of  the  peyote.  Yet  in  the  beginning,  despite  his 


202 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


propagandist  fervor,  the  cult  spread  slowly,  embracing  only 
Rave’s  immediate  family.  But  after  four  or  five  years  there 
was  a  marked  increase  in  membership  and  with  it  the  ap¬ 
parently  spontaneous  development  of  an  organization  with 
a  leader  and  four  deputies.  Towards  the  traditional  Winne¬ 
bago  faith  Rave’s  initial  attitude  was  that  of  passive  indif¬ 
ference,  but  for  various  reasons — doubtless  in  part  owing 
to  the  unreceptiveness  of  the  conservative  element — this 
changed  into  violent  antagonism. 

At  this  point  a  fundamental  innovation  was  introduced 
by  another  personality.  Hitherto  the  faith  had  been  essen¬ 
tially  of  aboriginal  cast  with  possibly  a  slight  tinge  of  Chris¬ 
tian  ethics.  Rave,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  an  illiterate 
and  hence  incapable  of  reading  the  Scriptures.  But  now 
there  appeared  on  the  scene  a  Carlisle  graduate  named  Al¬ 
bert  Hensley,  who  revolutionized  the  cult  by  introducing 
Bible  readings  and  making  Rave  baptize  the  members  with 
an  infusion  of  peyote.  Hensley,  who  was  an  epileptic,  ex¬ 
perienced  frequent  trances  with  glorious  visions  of  Heaven 
and  Hell,  which  he  subsequently  interpreted  in  terms  of  the 
Revelation.  At  the  same  time  he  explained  the  Bible  in  terms 
of  the  peyote,  assuming  the  position  that  the  Bible  was  in¬ 
telligible  only  through  the  supernatural  cactus.  Rave  him¬ 
self  preserved  an  attitude  of  indifference  towards  the  Scrip¬ 
tures.  He  was  quite  willing  to  accede  to  the  introduction  of 
Christian  features  if  craved  by  his  flock.  To  him  the  peyote 
was  the  end-all  and  be-all  of  the  cult,  the  source  of  all  bless¬ 
ings :  if  a  peyote-worshiper  reckoned  the  Bible  among  the 
life-values,  then  naturally  the  peyote  as  the  fountainhead  of 
everything  precious  would  open  up  avenues  for  its  compre¬ 
hension  that  otherwise  would  remain  closed. 

Subsequently  a  schism  was  precipitated  by  Hensley’s  puri- 
tanism.  He  objected  to  the  appointment  of  a  deputy  leader 


HISTORY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY  203 

of  notorious  character,  while  Rave  insisted  that  official  posi¬ 
tion  in  the  organization  was  independent  of  moral  character. 
Hensley  seceded  with  a  number  of  adherents,  but  the  major¬ 
ity  of  peyote-eaters  remained  under  Rave’s  guidance  and 
even  some  of  the  dissenters  returned  to  the  fold.  However, 
a  new  competitor  arose  when  in  1912  Jesse  Clay  returned 
from  the  Arapaho  and  introduced  their  form  of  the  Peyote 
ritual,  thus  establishing  a  distinct  sect,  in  which  Christian 
symbolism  is  conspicuous  while  Winnebago  conceptions,  at 
the  time  of  Dr.  Radin’s  inquiries,  were  wholly  absent.  It  is 
important  to  note  that  even  in  Rave’s  congregation  the  in¬ 
creasing  number  of  young  educated  Indians  tended  to  pre¬ 
serve  the  Christian  elements  due  to  Hensley,  despite  the  lat¬ 
ter’s  withdrawal.  Our  authority  notes,  indeed,  a  virtually 
complete  adoption  of  Christianity  by  some  of  the  members 
balanced  by  the  relapse  of  others  into  paganism,  while  many 
had  lost  their  ardor  for  Rave’s  cult.  The  subsequent  for¬ 
tunes  of  the  Peyote  sects  of  the  Winnebago  in  the  last  dec¬ 
ade  have  remained  unstudied. 

Now  when  we  examine  the  phenomena  outlined  above  we 
find  that  here,  too,  any  attempt  to  understand  their  sub¬ 
jective  aspect  is  doomed  to  failure  if  divorced  from  the  his¬ 
torical  facts.  To  begin  with  the  most  recent  innovation, 
Jesse  Clay’s  separatist  movement  is  psychologically  in  a  quite 
different  category  from  Hensley’s :  learning  from  the  Arap¬ 
aho  a  form  of  the  cult  diverging  from  Rave  s,  to  whose  in¬ 
fluence  he  had  apparently  remained  immmune,  he  naturally 
became  to  all  intents  and  purposes  the  prophet  of  a  new 
creed  rather  than  a  dissenter  from  an  established  one.  Again, 
Hensley’s  innovations  are  not  spontaneous  products  of  the 
religious  sentiment  but  represent  a  quaint  attempt  to  unify 
two  currents  of  thought  that  had  come  powerfully  to  affect 
his  mystic’s  soul, — Christianity  and  the  Peyote  complex. 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


204 

Without  alien  contact  of  a  specific  sort  the  former  influence 
could  never  have  been  exerted,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  was 
practically  non-existent  for  Rave,  the  illiterate  founder  of  the 
^Winnebago  cult.  It  is  in  considering  how  Rave  and  his  early 
followers  elaborated  the  “Peyote  cult”  that  the  indispensa¬ 
bility  of  a  historical  point  of  departure  for  psychological 
understanding  appears  most  clearly.  For  the  attitude  of  these 
devotees  is  unintelligible  except  on  the  basis  of  the  traditional 
Winnebago  faith.  Unlike  the  later  prophet  Clay,  Rave  was 
not  the  passive  recipient  of  an  alien  creed  but  automatically 
transformed  what  he  accepted  by  casting  it  into  the  tradi¬ 
tional  Winnebago  form.  The  peyote  plant  had  cured  him,  had 
put  him  into  a  state  of  exaltation,  and  he  forthwith  ranged  it 
in  the  category  of  sacred  substances  with  supernatural  cura¬ 
tive  powers,  assuming  towards  it  the  typical  attitude  of  a 
Winnebago  shaman.  It  was  customary  to  offer  tobacco  to 
supernatural  entities,  and  accordingly  he  offered  tobacco  to 
the  peyote.  There  were  five  leaders  in  the  ancient  Medicine 
Dance,  and  accordingly  the  new  society  had  a  leader  with 
four  deputies.  The  old  cult  societies  derived  their  origin 
from  the  revelation  granted  in  a  fasting  experience,  and  con¬ 
sequently  even  Hensley,  Christianized  as  he  was,  could  not 
free  himself  from  the  influence  of  this  tribal  pattern.  Thus 
we  find  once  more  that  the  path  to  psychology  lies  through 
history.  Only  when  we  know  the  Winnebago  heritage  of 
belief  and  ceremonial,  can  we  appreciate  the  psychological 
reactions  of  the  peyote-eaters,  whether  as  a  group  or  as 
single  individuals. 

References 

1  Catholic  Encyclopedia:  vm,  437,  442 )  IX>  329-  Scott. 
Schmiedel,  1906  (a)  and  (b). 

2  Mooney:  701-704,  706  f.,  764-842,  894-926,  958-1075. 

3  Radin,  1914  (a)  ;  id.,  1923 :  388  sq.  Bartlett :  160  sq. 


CHAPTER  X 


WOMAN  AND  RELIGION 

If  we  were  asked  whether  women  or  men  are  the  more 
religious,  most  of  us  should  unhesitatingly  answer  in  favor 
of  women  and  should  presumably  cite  their  proverbially 
greater  emotionalism  as  an  explanation.  On  the  Continent 
— say,  in  Spain — it  is  a  familiar  enough  thing  to  have 
women  go  to  mass  while  their  free-thinking  brothers  and 
husbands  never  enter  a  church,  and  in  Anglo-Saxon  coun¬ 
tries  pietism  or  any  obtrusively  religious  or  ethical  reform 
movement  is  more  definitely  associated  with  the  feminine 
psyche, — and  this  irrespective  of  the  fact  that  in  most  de¬ 
nominations  women  are  barred  from  the  positions  of  priest 
or  minister.  But  when  we  survey  the  corresponding  phe¬ 
nomena  of  ruder  cultures,  the  significant  fact  appears  that 
in  various  regions  women  are  not  only  ineligible  for  office 
but  seem  to  be  shut  out  from  all  religious  activity.  In 
most  Australian  tribes  it  would  be  death  for  a  woman  to 
witness  the  initiation  procedures;  corresponding  conditions 
have  been  described  for  New  Guinea  and  Melanesia  and 
have  a  sporadic  distribution  elsewhere.  Does  this  mean  that 
women  in  such  areas  are  really  debarred  from  religious 
manifestations?  And  if  not,  how  do  they  display  the  rele¬ 
vant  sentiments?  To  what  extent  are  their  disabilities 
founded  in  some  innate  peculiarity,  how  far  are  they  due 
to  a  specific  cultural  environment?  And  how  do  womans 
subjective  reactions  differ  from  man’s? 

At  the  present  stage  of  our  knowledge  some  of  these 

205 


206 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


questions  are  more  easily  asked  than  answered.  If  in  spite 
of  our  ignorance  a  special  chapter  is  devoted  to  the  topic, 
it  is  in  order  to  direct  attention  to  an  interesting  but  neg¬ 
lected  field  of  inquiry.  On  the  last-mentioned  problem  in 
particular  I  have  ransacked  the  literature  in  vain  for  even 
a  shred  of  enlightening  material.  One  turns  naturally  to 
those  regions  in  which  women  are  least  hampered  by  social 
conventions.  Thus,  among  the  Northwestern  Californians 
the  part  of  shaman  is  most  commonly  played  by  the  female 
sex,  and  Professor  Kroeber  has  secured  the  confessions  of 
one  of  these  medicine-women.  Yet  when  one  analyzes  her 
statements,  the  personal  factor  seems  wholly  submerged  in 
the  characteristic  tribal  (Yurok)  trait  of  greed  for  money: 
she  is  obsessed  with  the  desire  of  acquiring  wealth  through 
her  practice,  precisely  as  her  fellows,  male  or  female,  are 
in  the  ordinary  business  of  life :  “So  whatever  I  did  I  spoke 
of  money  constantly  ...  I  said  to  myself :  ‘When  people 
are  sick,  I  shall  cure  them  if  they  pay  me  enough.’  ”  From 
such  stereotyped  longings  of  avarice  it  is  impossible  to 
distill  the  faintest  flavor  of  distinctively  feminine  character. 

Among  the  Crow  there  are  relatively  few  restrictions 
because  of  sex.  Women,  as  well  as  men,  have  the  right 
to  seek  visions  and  if  they  avail  themselves  more  rarely 
of  the  privilege  it  is  because  in  so  intensely  martial  a  cul¬ 
ture  the  craving  for  success  in  war  is  the  most  usual  im¬ 
petus  to  a  vision-quest.  In  the  important  ceremonial  soci¬ 
ety  concerned  with  the  sacred  Tobacco  there  are  no  offices 
for  which  members  are  ineligible  because  of  sex,  and  the 
part  played  by  women  in  the  dances  is  a  conspicuous  one. 
Of  the  women  I  knew,  Muskrat  was  probably  the  most  pos¬ 
itive  personality  that  figured  in  religious  activities.  She 
was  very  well  informed  and  intelligent,  but  inordinately 

m  me- 

vain,  and  her  attempts  at  self-aggrandizement  were  some- 


WOMAN  AND  RELIGION  207 

times  ridiculed,  by  her  fellow-tribesmen  in  her  absence. 
She  had  been  Mixer  in  the  Weasel  chapter  of  the  Tobacco 
society,  and  to  the  resentment  of  some  old  people  she  con¬ 
tinued  to  exercise  the  duties  of  the  office  after  having  sold 
the  prerogative.  She  herself  explained  that  she  had  only 
sold  part  of  it  and  at  all  events  remained  a  dominant  figure 
in  the  organization.  I  repeatedly  interviewed  her  and 
obtained  much  interesting  information  but  nothing  that 
would  suggest  a  positive  sex  difference.  Thus,  she  had  a 
revelation  of  a  particular  tobacco-mixing  recipe  such  as  any 
man  might  have  secured ;  on  another  occasion  a  weasel 
entered  her  body,  a  not  uncommon  experience  of  either 
sex;  precisely  like  any  other  member  of  the  Tobacco  or¬ 
ganization  she  adopted  new  members ;  and  again  like  other 
Crow  Indians  with  corresponding  revelations  she  exercised 
specific  functions,  such  as  charming  an  unfaithful  husband 
or  doctoring  broken  bones.  Her  taboos  also  wholly  re¬ 
semble  those  of  other  visionaries  in  principle. 

It  is  of  course  conceivable — though  hardly  a  priori  prob¬ 
able — that  no  sex  differences  exist.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  is  possible  that  our  field  methods  have  hitherto  been  too 
gross  to  sense  such  elusive  differences  as  may  occur ;  and  at 
all  events  a  resolute  attempt  in  that  direction — if  possible, 
by  a  woman  anthropologist — would  be  eminently  worth 

while. 

If  very  little  can  be  said  on  the  subjective  side,  I  think 
we  can  definitely  dispose  of  a  plausible  misconception  based 
on  objective  observations.  It  does  not  follow  that  women 
are  excluded  from  the  religious  life  of  the  community  be¬ 
cause  their  social  status  is  inferior  or  because  certain  spec¬ 
tacular  features  are  tabooed  to  them.  In  the  striking  Ekoi 
case  we  found  that  women  were  indeed  prohibited  from 
touching  a  strong  njomm  or  seeing  a  bull-roarer  or  a  stilt- 


208 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


walking  exhibition  and  from  ever  intruding  into  an  Egbo 
meeting;  but  by  way  of  compensation  they -exclude  men 
from  the  Nimm  sorority  and  through  that  cult  play  no 
mean  part  in  tribal  ritual.  Elsewhere  in  Africa  the  legal 
subordination  of  women  in  no  wise  interferes  with  very 
important  religious  offices.  Among  the  Zulu,  women  no 
less  than  men  detect  sorcerers,  and  the  same  is  reported 
for  the  Thonga,  where  Mholombo,  whom  M.  Junod  not 
unnaturally  describes  as  ‘‘an  extraordinarily  acute  woman,” 
would  confound  evil  magicians,  work  such  miracles  as 
walking  on  the  water,  and  interpret  the  divining-bones 
through  the  agency  of  a  spirit  possessing  her.  Other  women 
have  been  known  to  become  diviners,  though  not  so  often 
as  men,  and  to  be  possessed  by  ancestral  ghosts ;  and  though 
normally  the  eldest  brother  acts  as  priest  in  ancestral  wor¬ 
ship  the  duty  may  also  devolve  on  the  eldest  sister.2 

The  condition  characteristic  of  these  African  tribes  is  of 
very  wide  distribution :  that  is  to  say,  women  may  not 
participate  so  frequently  or  so  fully  as  men,  yet  their  role 
is  far  from  negligible  in  the  religious  life.  For  instance, 
the  highest  reaches  of  Chukchi  shamanism — those  connected 
with  the  practice  of  ventriloquism — are  inaccessible  to  the 
female  sex,  yet  lesser  forms  of  inspiration  are  more  com¬ 
monly  bestowed  on  women  than  otherwise.  In  the  Anda¬ 
man  Islands  women  do  not  join  in  ordinary  dances,  though 
they  attend  to  form  the  chorus ;  but  they  have  a  mourning 
dance  of  their  own  and  act  as  shamans,  though  less  fre¬ 
quently  than  men.  In  Polynesia,  again,  all  kinds  of  taboos 
hedged  in  the  life  of  the  women:  in  Hawaii  they  were 
obliged  to  eat  food  apart  from  the  men  and  were  not  even 
allowed  to  enter  a  man’s  eating-house  prior  to  the  abolition 
of  the  old  rule  by  a  decree  of  Kamehameha  II  in  1819; 


WOMAN  AND  RELIGION  209 

they  were  not  admitted  to  the  sacred  college  of  the  Maori 
of  New  Zealand  and  might  not  travel  by  boat  in  the  Mar¬ 
quesas.  But  in  spite  of  Malo’s  statement  that  in  Hawaii 
the  majority  of  them  “had  no  deity  and  just  worshiped 
nothing,”  his  own  description  tells  of  their  worship  of 
female  deities;  and  in  Tonga  inspirational  dreams  of  con¬ 
sequence  were  not  denied  to  women.3 

It  is,  however,  particularly  noteworthy  that  even  in 
regions  where  some  rigid  penalty  seems  wholly  to  eliminate 
women  from  ceremonial  participation  closer  scrutiny  re¬ 
veals  a  very  different  state  of  affairs.  Oceania  and  Aus¬ 
tralia  furnish  stock  examples  of  the  former,  but  the  less 
obtrusive  assertion  of  women  in  religious  life  has  not  been 
adequately  recognized.  Thus,  among  the  Tami  of  New 
Guinea  we  have  seen  that  while  the  female  sex  was  ex¬ 
cluded  from  the  initiation  ceremony  and  terrorized  by  its 
performers,  women  normally  call  the  spirits  of  recently 
deceased  tribesmen.  An  equally  striking  illustration  is  pro¬ 
vided  by  Australia.  Among  the  Euahlayi  of  New  South 
Wales  the  inner  mysteries  of  the  initiation  ritual  also  re¬ 
main  a  sealed  book  to'  women,  nay,  even  the  usual  name, 
Byamee,  of  its  divine  inaugurator  is  concealed  from  them. 
But  this  does  not  prevent  them  from  praying  to  him  under 
another  designation,  as  did  that  remarkable  old  shaman, 
Bootha,  whose  portrait  has  been  so  vividly  painted  by  Mrs. 
Parker.  When  probably  well  over  sixty,  she  absented  her¬ 
self  from  camp  in  order  to  grieve  over  the  loss  of  a  favorite 
granddaughter.  After  a  long  seclusion  in  more  or  less 
demented  condition  she  returned  a  full-fledged  medicine- 
woman.  Henceforth  she  was  able  to  summon  and  inter¬ 
rogate  the  guardian  spirits  acquired;  with  their  aid  she 
performed  miraculous  cures  and  produced  rain  at  will,  evi- 


210 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


dently  exerting  a  considerable  influence  on  the  aborigines 
in  the  vicinity  and  apparently  in  no  way  inferior  to  her 
male  colleagues.4 

An  American  instance  may  be  added  for  good  measure. 
The  Northern  Athabaskans  generally  are  hardly  conspic¬ 
uous  for  their  chivalrous  attitude  toward  women,  and  the 
Anvik,  who  inhabit  an  Alaskan  village  some  hundred  and 
twenty-five  miles  inland,  form  no  exception.  Even  from 
infancy  a  girl  is  carefully  watched  lest  she  step  on  any¬ 
thing  lying  on  the  floor  that  might  affect  the  welfare  of 
her  family.  “The  spirit  of  the  boy  is  stronger  than  the 
spirit  of  the  girl,  so  a  boy  may  step  where  he  pleases.” 
As  the  child  grows  older,  restrictions  multiply,  especially 
from  puberty  on,  nor  has  the  girl  a  will  of  her  own  in 
the  choice  of  a  mate.  Again,  there  is  discrimination  in 
the  ceremonial  use  of  masks :  men  may  wear  female  masks, 
but  no  woman  is  allowed  to  put  on  a  man’s  mask.  Yet, 
all  these  taboos  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  the  weaker 
sex  is  by  no  means  wholly  debarred  from  participation  in 
the  religious  activities  of  the  community.  Some  women 
own  sacred  songs  and  chant  them  at  the  tribal  festivals. 
There  are  female  shamans  who  treat  sick  members  of  their 
sex,  and  the  wives  of  shamans  are  favored  to  the  extent 
of  being  allowed  to  sing  at  the  more  important  dances  and 
to  inherit  something  of  their  deceased  husbands’  supernat¬ 
ural  gifts.  Individual  cases  are  known  of  women  who 
gained  great  influence. 

Cries- for-salmon’s  mother  is  a  woman  with  power.  She  has 
many  strong  songs.  Her  father  had  been  a  great  hunter,  with 
wolverene  and  bear  songs.  She  is  always  consulted  in  the  vil¬ 
lage,  she  knows  her  power,  and  there  is  no  one  to  check  her  or 
to  talk  about  her.6 


WOMAN  AND  RELIGION 


2 1 1 


This  notable  trio  of  instances  establishes  a  sort  of  a 
fortiori  conclusion.  Evidently  even  marked  sexual  disabil¬ 
ities  do  not  exclude  women  from  exercising  religious  func¬ 
tions  of  social  significance,  and  there  is  not  the  slightest 
indication  that  their  limitations  are  the  consequence  of  in¬ 
nate  incapacity  or  that  a  lack  of  emotional  interest  in  re¬ 
ligion  has  been  engendered  by  compulsory  disuse.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  as  soon  as  outward  pressure  is  somewhat 
relaxed  the  sexes  share  quite  equitably  in  ceremonial  duties. 
This  is  clear  even  from  the  African  cases  cited  above,  and 
the  case  for  North  America  could  be  easily  strengthened 
by  additional  instances.  Among  the  Plains  Indians  the 
custody  of  sacred  objects,  such  as  shields,  was  regularly 
entrusted  to  a  favorite  wife;  membership  in  secret  organi¬ 
zations  was  often  open  to  women  on  equal  terms  with  men; 
nay,  they  were  even  at  times  eligible  to  the  highest  ceremonial 
offices.  To  turn  to  another  area,  nothing  could  be  fairer 
than  the  allotment  of  ritualistic  privileges  among  the  Bagobo 
of  Mindanao,  and  indeed  other  natives  of  the  Philippines. 
Old  men  offer  sacred  food,  recount  their  exploits  while 
holding  the  ceremonial  bamboo  poles  they  have  cut,  prepare 
for  human  sacrifices,  perform  magical  rites,  while  old  women 
conduct  altar  rites  at  the  harvest,  make  offerings  at  shrines, 
and  recite  the  accompanying  prayers.  If  the  men  direct  the 
ceremonial  as  a  whole,  it  is  virtually  a  feminine  prerogative 
(as  in  New  Guinea)  to  summon  the  spirits  at  a  seance.  In¬ 
deed,  the  women  “direct  many  ceremonial  details  and  are 
often  called  into  consultation  with  the  old  men;  they  exercise 
a  general  supervision  over  the  religious  behavior  of  the  young 
people.”  6 

Where  pronounced  religious  disabilities  occur,  I  am  in¬ 
clined  to  impute  them  predominantly  to  the  savage  man’s 
horror  of  menstruation.  Lest  this  seem  a  fanciful  sugges- 


212  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

tion,  I  offer  by  way  of  substantiation  a  part  of  the  abundant 
evidence. 

Among'  the  I  la,  a  Bantu  tribe  o  f  Rhodesia,  a  woman  dur¬ 
ing  her  periodic  illness  is  dangerous  “and  must  be  separated 
as  far  as  possible  from  contact  with  her  fellows. ”  A  man 
eating  with  her  would  lose  his  virility,  and  sick  people  would 
be  most  injuriously  affected  by  her.  She  may  not  use  the 
common  fire  or  handle  other  people’s  pots  or  drink  from  their 
cups  or  cook  or  draw  water  for  others.  In  Central  Aus¬ 
tralia  a  menstruating  woman  is  carefully  avoided,  while  in 
Queensland  she  is  secluded  and  must  not  even  walk  in  a 
mans  tiacks.  In  the  Torres  Straits  Islands  investigators 
have  found  an  “intense  fear  of  the  deleterious  and  infective 
powers  of  the  menstrual  fluid,”  and  various  taboos  are  im¬ 
posed  on  the  menstruant,  who  must  live  in  seclusion,  shun 
the  daylight,  and  abstain  from  sea-food.  Her  Marshall 
Island  sister  dwells  in  a  special  menstrual  hut,  is  limited  to 
a  prescribed  diet,  and  is  believed  to  exert  an  inauspicious  in¬ 
fluence.7  * 

However,  for  no  other  region  is  the  evidence  so  con¬ 
vincing  as  for  America.  One  of  the  most  illuminating  re¬ 
ports  is  that  of  an  eighteenth  century  observer  among  the 
Choctaw  of  Louisiana.  Here  the  women  at  once  left  the 
house,  hid  from  the  sight  of  men,  were  not  permitted  to  use 
the  family  fire  lest  the  household  be  polluted,  and  under  no 
condition  were  supposed  to  cook  for  other  people.  The 
French  nan  ator,  having  once  stumbled  upon  a  menstruant, 
prevailed  upon  her  to  make  him  “some  porridge  of  little 
grain,  and  after  the  arrival  of  the  husband  invited  him  to 
partake  of  the  meal.  At  first  the  Choctaw  unwittingly  fell 

to  eating,  but  suddenly  grew  suspicious  and  inquired  for  the 
cook. 


WOMAN  AND  RELIGION 


213 


.  .  .  When  I  replied  that  it  was  his  wife  who  had  been  my 
cook,  he  was  at  once  seized  with  sickness  and  went  to  the  door 
to  vomit.  Then,  reentering  and  looking  into  the  dish,  he  no¬ 
ticed  some  red  things  in  the  porridge,  which  were  nothing  else 
than  the  skin  of  the  corn,  some  grains  of  which  are  red.  He 
said  to  me:  “How  have  you  the  courage  to  eat  of  this  stew? 
Do  you  not  see  the  blood  in  it  ?”  Then  be  began  vomiting  again 
and  continued  until  he  had  vomited  up  all  that  he  had  eaten ;  and 
his  imagination  was  so  strongly  affected  that  he  was  sick  on 
account  of  it  for  some  days  afterward. 

In  intensity  of  reaction  the  Menomini  of  Wisconsin  rival 
the  Choctaw.  A  woman  must  use  her  own  culinary  uten¬ 
sils  during  her  illness,  and  she  must  not  touch  a  tree,  a  dog, 
or  a  child  lest  it  die.  She  is  not  supposed  to  scratch  her¬ 
self  with  her  fingers  but  with  a  special  stick.  As  Mr.  Skin¬ 
ner  reports : 

To  this  day  many  pagan  Menomini  positively  refuse  to  eat  in 
Christian  houses  for  fear  of  losing  their  powers  through  par¬ 
taking  of  food  prepared  by  a  woman  undergoing  her  monthly 
terms. 

The  Winnebago  go  so  far  as  to  assert  that  sacred  objects 
lose  their  power  through  contact  with  a  menstruating 
woman. 

If  the  Winnebago  can  be  said  to  be  afraid  of  any  one  thing 
it  may  be  said  it  is  this — the  menstrual  flow  of  women— for  even 
the  spirits  die  of  its  effects.8 

In  the  Far  West  the  same  psychological  attitude  appears 
practically  unchanged.  A  Black  foot  menstruant  must  keep 


214 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


away  from  sacred  articles  and  from  sick  people :  something 
would  strike  the  patient  “like  a  bullet  and  make  him  worse.” 
What  is  particularly  noteworthy  is  the  diffusion  of  corres¬ 
ponding  beliefs  throughout  the  area  of  rudest  culture.  As 
late  as  1906  I  myself  was  able  to  observe  the  seclusion  of 
Shoshoni  women  in  Idaho,  where  abstention  from  meat  was 
likewise  imperative  during  the  period.  The  same  food  taboo 
was  observed  by  their  kinsmen,  the  Paviotso  of  Nevada,  who 
gave  as  a  justification  that  if  the  women  ate  antelope  flesh 
the  game  impounded  in  a  drive  would  break  through  the  en¬ 
closure.  In  north-central  California  the  Shasta  impose  a 
special  hut,  the  scratching-stick,  strict  food  taboos,  and  the 
rule  that  the  woman  must  not  look  at  people  or  the  sun  or  the 
moon.  Should  a  woman  be  taken  unexpectedly  ill  while  at 
home, 

all  men  leave  at  once,  taking  with  them  their  bows,  spears  and 
nets,  lest  they  become  contaminated  and  thus  all  luck  desert 
them. 

Among  the  Chinook  of  the  lower  Columbia  the  adolescent 
girl  is  under  rigorous  restrictions. 

She  must  not  warm  herself.  She  must  never  look  at  the 
people.  She  must  not  look  at  the  sky,  she  must  not  pick  ber¬ 
ries.  It  is  forbidden.  When  she  looks  at  the  sky  it  becomes 
bad  weather.  When  she  picks  berries  it  will  rain.  She  hangs 
up  her  towel  of  cedar  bark  on  a  certain  spruce  tree.  The  tree 
dries  up  at  once.  After  one  hundred  days  she  may  eat  fresh 
food,  she  may  pick  berries  and  warm  herself. 

In  subsequent  catamenial  periods  she  must  not  be  seen  by  a 
sick  person,  nor  must  berries  picked  by  her  be  eaten  by  the 
sick.  Finally  (though  the  list  could  be  greatly  enlarged), 


WOMAN  AND  RELIGION 


215 


there  are  the  Northern  Athabaskans.  According  to  Father 
Morice,  “hardly  any  other  being  was  the  object  of  so  much 
dread  as  a  menstruating  woman,”  who  ate  only  dried  fish, 
drank  water  through  a  tube,  and  was  not  allowed  to  live  with 
her  male  kin  nor  to  touch  anything  belonging  to  men  or  re¬ 
lated  to  the  chase  “lest  she  would  thereby  pollute  the  same, 
and  condemn  the  hunters  to  failure,  owing  to  the  anger  of 
the  game  thus  slighted.”  More  than  a  century  ago  Samuel 
Hearne  made  corresponding  observations  among  the  related 
Chipewyan:  women  in  question  lived  apart  in  a  hovel  and 
were  not  permitted  to  walk  near  a  net  or  to  eat  the  head  of 
an  animal  or  cross  the  track  where  a  deer  head  had  lately  been 
carried, — and  all  this  to  ward  off  bad  hunting  luck.  Quite 
similar  notions  prevail  among  their  fellow-Athabaskans,  the 
Anvik,  of  Alaska.9 

It  is  not  so  easy  to  trace  the  distribution  of  such  a  trait  in 
the  southern  half  of  the  New  World,  yet,  thanks  mainly  to 
Father  Schmidt’s  indefatigable  industry,  we  are  in  a  position 
to  state  positively  that  in  one  form  or  another  the  usage 
extends  all  the  way  to  Tierra  del  Fuego,  being  found  in 
southern  Central  America,  Colombia,  Guiana,  Peru,  Brazil, 
Patagonia,  and  around  Cape  Florn.  The  descriptions  are 
not  always  so  circumstantial  as  for  North  America.  Thus, 
from  a  Fuegian  report  I  glean  merely  the  imposition  of  a 
puberty  fast  on  girls.  The  Mundrucu  added  exposure  to 
smoke,  the  Paravilhana  corporal  punishment.  Among  the 
Siusi  the  girl  was  under  dietary  restrictions,  her  hair  was 
cut,  and  her  back  was  daubed  with  paint.  The  Arawak  of 
Guiana  present  the  typical  complex  of  seclusion,  fire  and  food 
taboos.10  To  what  extent  fuller  knowledge  of  all  these  tribes 
would  bring  ampler  accounts,  remains  obscure.  We  should 
like  to  know  especially  whether  later  menstruation  is  likewise 
linked  with  definite  regulations.  But  even  in  our  present 


21 6 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


state  of  ignorance  it  is  proper  to  advance  the  hypothesis  that 
some  sort  of  menstrual  taboo  is  a  deep-rooted,  an  archaic 
element  of  American  culture. 

Let  us  now  survey  the  remainder  of  the  world.  I  have 
already  pointed  out  that  the  sentiment  underlying  menstrual 
prohibitions  exists  in  Oceania,  Australia,  and  Africa.  In  the 
rudest  tribes  for  which  I  can  get  evidence  it  likewise  occurs, 
but  not  in  the  extreme  form  typical  of,  say,  the  Choctaw. 
The  Andamanese  do  not  insist  on  departure  from  the  camp, 
but  proscribe  certain  kinds  of  food  for  their  alleged  evil  ef¬ 
fects  on  the  woman .  Bushman  practice,  at  least  at  the  time 
of  adolescence,  conforms  more  closely  to  type :  the  adolescent 
is  segregated  in  a  tiny  hut  with  a  door  closed  upon  her  by  her 
mother;  she  must  not  walk  about  freely  nor  look  at  the 
springbok  lest  they  become  wild;  and  when  going  out  she 
must  look  down  at  the  ground.  On  rules  of  subsequent 
periods  I  cannot  find  any  data.  Of  the  Paleo-Siberians,  the 
Maritime  Chukchi  do  not  allow  a  menstruating  woman  to  ap¬ 
proach  her  husband;  even  her  breath  is  impure  and  might 
contaminate  him,  destroying  his  luck  as  sea-hunter,  nay, 
causing  him  to  be  drowned.  Under  similar  circumstances, 
her  Koryak  sister  must  not  tamper  with  her  husband’s  hunt¬ 
ing  and  fishing  apparatus  or  sit  on  his  sledge,  while  among 
the  Yukaghir  she  is  forbidden  to  touch  the  sacred  drum.11 

From  the  occurrence  of  the  custom  among  the  rudest  peo¬ 
ples  of  the  Old  World — the  Paleo-Siberians,  Andamanese, 
Bushmen — and  the  rudest  peoples  of  America,  and  its  wide 
distribution  on  somewhat  higher  levels,  we  can  draw  the 
conclusion  that  menstrual  restrictions  are  of  great  antiquity 
in  the  history  of  human  culture,  though  probably  not  in  the 
extreme  form  distinctive  of  many  Indian  tribes  of  Canada 
and  the  United  States.  Reverting  now  to  my  hypothesis 
that  disabilities  are  correlated  with  the  awe  inspired  by  men- 


WOMAN  AND  RELIGION 


217 

struation,  I  should  like  to  cite  several  facts  by  way  of  corrob¬ 
oration.  Where  the  relevant  taboos  exist  in  mild  form 
or  are  lacking,  sex  discrimination  seems  to  be  likewise  moder¬ 
ate.  The  Bagobo  let  women  share  in  ceremonial  life  on  a 
footing  of  virtual  equality  and  I  cannot  find  evidence  of  men¬ 
strual  restrictions.  In  the  Andamans  women  do  not  ordina¬ 
rily  join  in  the  dancing  but  attend,  forming  the  chorus;  and 
quite  similarly  the  Bushman  women  beat  the  drum  and  clap 
their  hands  for  the  male  dancers.12  Still  more  interesting, 
where  the  discrimination  is  intense,  it  is  relaxed  in  old  age : 
old  women  enjoy  privileges  in  Australia  and  New  Guinea  that 
are  denied  to  their  younger  sisters.  The  reason  is  not  diffi¬ 
cult  to  divine  and  is  explicitly  stated  by  a  Winnebago  in¬ 
formant  : 

At  a  feast  .  .  .  the  old  women,  who  have  passed  their  climac¬ 
teric,  sit  right  next  to  the  men,  because  they  are  considered  the 
same  as  men  as  they  have  no  menstrual  flow  any  more. 

-r  '  / 

That  is  to  say,  before  the  menopause  women  are  weird  crea¬ 
tures,  after  the  menopause  they  become  ordinary  human  be¬ 
ings,  though  in  many  cases,  no  doubt,  their  former  uncanni¬ 
ness  still  in  some  measure  clings  to  them.  A  fact  otherwise 
obscure  can  be  explained  from  this  angle.  Why  do  the  Chuk¬ 
chi,  who  close  the  highest  grade  of  shamanism  to  women, 
fail  to  bar  male  inverts  who  in  every  way  dress  and  act  as 
women  ?  Obviously  because  in  their  case  the  sentiments  pro¬ 
duced  by  the  thought  of  menstruation  are  eliminated. 

In  closing  the  discussion  of  this  topic  I  am  painfully  con¬ 
scious  of  having  contributed  very  little  to  a  highly  important 
subject.  But  I  hope  the  attempt  to  treat  it  as  a  distinct  set 
of  problems  will  lead  to  more  systematic  research, — especially 
in  the  field. 


2l8 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


This  is  perhaps  as  good  a  place  as  any  to  express  what 
little  I  have  to  say  about  a  theory  broached  rather  vocifer¬ 
ously  in  some  quarters,  to  wit,  the  view  that  religion  is  at 
bottom  nothing  but  misunderstood  erotic  emotion.  It  must 
be  obvious  that  two  phenomena  that  exert  so  profound  an  in¬ 
fluence  on  so  many  phases  of  human  conduct  must  have  cer¬ 
tain  points  of  contact.  The  simplest  kind  of  interrelation¬ 
ship  occurs  where  the  gratification  of  erotic  desire  is  merely 
one  of  the  life-values,  which  accordingly  like  other  life- 
values  can  be  secured  by  an  appropriate  intercourse  with  the 
Extraordinary.  Following  the  traditional  technique  of  his 
tribe,  a  Crow  will  seek  a  vision,  where  a  Bukaua  mutters  a 
spell  and  uses  some  magical  charm.  But  these  procedures, 
employed  for  a  hundred  other  purposes,  can  obviously  not 
be  derived  from  a  single,  arbitrarily  selected  motive  for  their 
application. 

There  are,  however,  a  group  of  other  facts  adduced  by  the 
adherents  of  the  theory  to  prove  the  dependence  of  religious 
feeling  on  the  sex  instinct.  I  will  follow  the  convenient 
summary  provided  by  Mr.  Thouless.  It  is  asserted  that 
adolescence  is  preeminently  the  period  of  religious  conver¬ 
sion,  hence  religious  experience  is  functionally  related  with 
the  instinct  that  comes  to  maturity  at  this  period.  Secondly, 
religion  employs  the  language  characteristic  of  the  expression 
of  erotic  passion.  Finally,  the  theory  assumes  a  special  con¬ 
cern  of  religion  with  the  suppression  of  normal  sexual  activ¬ 
ity,  and  a  compensatory  reaction  against  such  asceticism. 

Viewing  the  question  primarily  from  the  ethnological 
angle,  I  find  myself  in  substantial  agreement  with  James  and 
Thouless  in  rejecting  the  evidence  as  ludicrously  inconclusive 
for  the  attempted  demonstration.13  Mystic  experiences  are 
indeed  commonly  sought  and  secured  at  the  age  of  puberty 
but  by  no  means  exclusively  so.  Indeed,  as  Dr.  R.  F.  Bene- 


WOMAN  AND  RELIGION 


219 


diet  has  proved,  several  of  the  Plains  Indian  tribes  regularly 
permitted  the  obtaining  of  a  revelation  in  mature  middle  age, 
sometimes  to  the  exclusion  of  the  puberty  fast.14  On  the 
other  hand,  among  the  tribes  of  the  Great  Lakes  the  experi¬ 
ence  considerably  antedated  what  could  by  the  wildest  stretch 
of  the  imagination  be  called  adolescence.  Here,  as  every¬ 
where,  the  psychological  problem  is  complicated  by  the  influ¬ 
ence  of  cultural  environment.  It  is  evidently  a  matter  of 
social  tradition  whether  the  religious  thrill  is  looked  for  and 
obtained  at  seven,  at  fifteen,  or  at  forty.  Hence,  it  might 
be  argued  that  these  conventions  artificially  defer  or  accel¬ 
erate  the  advent  of  religious  emotion  that  “naturally”  comes 
with  the  approach  of  adolescence.  But  this  would  be  an 
arbitrary  assertion  pending  empirical  confirmation. 

The  argument  from  religious  phraseology  seems  weaker 
still.  It  is  true  that  a  Crow  visionary  is  greeted  by  his  pa¬ 
tron  with  the  words  “I  adopt  you  as  my  son,”  and  the  associ¬ 
ated  ideas  are  undoubtedly  those  of  the  aid  and  protection 
the  “son”  is  henceforth  to  receive  from  his  “father.”  But 
I  am  quite  unable  to  see  in  this  any  adumbration  of  an  oc¬ 
cult  “father-complex.”  As  James  wisely  remarks,  religious 
sentiment  simply  utilizes  “such  poor  symbols  as  our  life  af¬ 
fords,”  and  he  amply  proves  that  digestive  and  respiratory 
concepts  serve  the  same  purpose  of  vivid  representation  as 
directly  or  indirectly  amatory  ones.  If  we  attach  undue  im¬ 
portance  to  the  words  used  by  man  in  his  groping  for  an 
adequate  expression  of  his  thoughts  and  feelings,  we  may  be 
driven  to  reduce  the  sex  instinct  to  that  of  nutrition  when 
a  lover  “hungers”  for  the  sight  of  his  sweetheart  and  charge 
him  with  a  latent  cannibalistic  inclination  which  is  at  least 
improbable. 

As  for  the  repression  and  compensatory  over-indulgence 
of  the  sex  appetite,  neither  can  be  said  to  be  characteristic  of 


220 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


primitive  religion.  Special  phenomena,  appearing  in  re¬ 
stricted  points  of  space  and  time,  are  here  confounded  with 
the  universal  essence  of  religion.  The  same  applies  to  the 
orgies  that  are  sometimes  spectacular  accompaniments  of 
ceremonialism;  interesting  specimens  of  the  ideas  that  may 
become  associated  with  religious  phenomena,  they  do  not  as  a 
rule  touch  the  core  of  religion.  That  must  be  sought  where 
James  looked  for  it,  in  “the  immediate  content  of  the  re¬ 
ligious  consciousness,”  and  I  quite  agree  that  “few  con¬ 
ceptions  are  less  instructive  than  this  re-interpretation  of 
religion  as  perverted  sexuality.” 

References 

1  Lowie,  1919 :  1 19  sq. ;  id.,  1922  :  339  sq. 

2  Talbot :  21,  23,  25,  95,  225,  284.  Shooter :  174-183.  Junod : 
11,  377,  438,  444,  456,  466. 

3Bogoras:  415.  Brown:  129,  131,  176.  Malo:  50-53,  112. 
Mariner:  262. 

4  Parker :  6,  8,  42-49,  59. 

6  Parsons,  1922 :  337  sq. 

6  L.  W.  Benedict:  10,  76  sq.,  193  sq. 

7  Smith  and  Dale:  11,  26  f.  Spencer  and  Gillen,  1904:  601. 
Roth,  1897:  184.  Reports  of  the  Cambridge  Expedition:  v, 
196,,  201  sq.  Erdland:  135. 

8  Swanton,  1918 :  59.  Skinner,  1913  :  52.  Radin,  1923  :  136  f. 

9  Wissler,  1911,  29.  Dixon,  1907:  457  sq.  Boas,  1894:  246. 
Morice:  218.  Hearne:  313  sq.  Parsons,  1922:  344. 

10  Schmidt,  1913.  Martius :  1,  390,  631.  Koch-Griinberg : 
181.  Roth,  1915:  312  f.  Buschan:  217,  360. 

11  Brown :  94.  Bleek  and  Lloyd :  76  f .  Bogoras :  492.  Jochel- 
son,  1905-1908:  54;  id.,  1910:  104. 

12  Brown:  131.  Bleek  and  Lloyd:  355. 

13  James:  11.  Thouless  :  130  sq. 

14  R.  F.  Benedict :  49  sq. 


CHAPTER  XI 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 

Useful,  nay  indispensable,  as  is  the  historico-sociological 
point  of  view  for  an  understanding  of  the  individual’s  religi¬ 
ous  life,  there  are  limits  to  its  potency.  The  individual  is 
not  merged  completely  in  his  social  milieu, — he  reacts  to  it 
as  an  individual,  that  is,  differently  from  every  other  group 
member.  The  cultural  tradition  of  his  people  dominates 
him,  but  it  is  reflected  in  a  distinctive  fashion  by  each  psyche. 
Were  it  otherwise,  novel  conceptions  could  never  arise.  It 
is  reckoned  one  of  the  most  epoch-making  steps  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  psychology  that  Galton  investigated  mind  not  in  the 
abstract  but  in  its  varying  manifestations  among  different 
personalities.  For  too  long  a  time  it  has  been  customary  to 
ignore  corresponding  differences  in  primitive  peoples  on  the 
familiar  principle  that  “all  Chinamen  look  alike.”  Only  in 
quite  recent  years  men  like  Dr.  R.  R.  Marett  in  England, 
Dr.  W.  D.  Wallis  in  America,  Fathers  Wilhelm  Schmidt  and 
W.  Koppers  in  Austria,  have  insisted  that  what  holds  among 
us  also  holds  in  ruder  levels  of  culture. 

In  the  following  pages  I  make  an  unpretentious  effort  to 
furnish  some  illustrative  material.  The  question  involved  is 
at  bottom  that  of  the  relation  of  the  individual  to  society. 
Sometimes  no  doubt  personal  idiosyncrasies  seem  to  pro¬ 
duce  no  effect  on  the  life  of  the  community;  but  they  do  not, 
for  that  reason,  remain  free  from  social  entanglements.  The 
extent  to  which  they  are  free  to  assert  themselves  is  itself  a 
function  of  the  social  system  in  which  they  appear. 

221 


222  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

Even  when  we  are  bent  on  determining  the  individual 
mentality,  we  are  thus  obliged  to  examine  constantly  the 
social  concomitants.  It  might  appear  at  first  blush  that  a 
basic  phenomenon  such  as  that  direct  communion  with  the 
supernatural  which  underlies  all  religion  could  be  compre¬ 
hended  in  purely  psychological  terms,  that  is,  without  refer¬ 
ence  to  any  social  norms.  The  very  fact,  however,  that  a 
given  individual  shall  be  eligible  for  converse  with  super¬ 
natural  powers  is  socially  determined.  The  differences  ob¬ 
taining  in  this  respect  within  a  single  continent  have  been 
clearly  summarized  by  Mrs.  Benedict.  In  the  Plains  area, 
as  typified  by  the  Crow,  there  is  free  access  to  the  powers 
of  the  universe :  “die  Geisterwelt  ist  nicht  verschlossen”  to 
any  one,  hence  all  have  at  least  potential  personal  contact 
with  the  divine;  here,  then,  innate  differences  may  corres¬ 
pond  closely  to  the  observed  differences  in  religious  behavior. 
But  it  is  quite  otherwise  where,  as  in  California,  the  pre¬ 
rogative  of  a  guardian  spirit  or  of  vision-seeking  is  confined 
to  a  small  group  of  shamans,  who  acquire  their  status  by 
some  such  means  as  inheritance.  Here,  the  majority  are 
socially  precluded  from  competition  with  “the  vested  inter¬ 
ests,”  so  to  speak,  and  no  sound  conclusions  could  be  drawn 
as  to  their  inborn  religious  deficiencies  by  comparison  with 
the  shamanistic  class.1 

Even  where  the  direct  communion  with  superior  beings  is 
unrestricted,  special  cultural  conditions  complicate  the  in¬ 
dividual’s  behavior.  We  found  this  to  be  true  among  the 
Crow,  where  such  accepted  notions  as  the  mystic  potency 
of  the  number  four  spontaneously  affect  the  character  of  an 
experience,  whatever  may  be  the  individual’s  mental  char¬ 
acteristics.  This  automatic  influence  of  the  surrounding  cul¬ 
ture  is  all  the  more  noteworthy  because  here  there  is  no  con¬ 
scious  attempt  on  any  one’s  part  to  influence  the  would-be 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 


223 


visionary’s  experiences.  We  are  thus  dealing  with  an  a 
fortiori  case.  Among  the  Great  Lakes  Indians,  such  as  the 
Ojibwa  and  Winnebago,  the  social  factor  plays  so  dominant 
a  role  as  almost  wholly  to  obscure  and  eliminate  the  individ¬ 
ual  nature  of  the  experience. 

The  Winnebago  youth’s  fasting  experience  is  carefully  tested 
by  the  elders,  and  if  found  wanting  in  any  respect  the  youth  has 
either  to  try  again  or  give  up. 

We  constantly  read  of  how  parents  exhort  boys  to  fast  and 
fast  long  in  order  to  acquire  a  blessing,  how  offerings  of 
power  deemed  unsuitable  by  the  elders  are  rejected  at  their 
behest  in  the  hope  of  more  favorable  revelations,  yet  among 
the  Menomini  even  this  veto  privilege  is  conventionally  regu¬ 
lated  and  when  an  evil  spirit  has  appeared  a  fixed  number  of 
times  his  blessing  must  be  accepted.  When  we  read  how  the 
Ojibwa  Forever-bird  was  sent  out  to  fast  at  the  age  of  five 
and  thereafter  constantly  urged  to  repeat  the  experience  at 
intervals,  it  is  obvious  that  no  spontaneous  psychological  re¬ 
action  can  be  expected  under  such  external  prompting  and 
surveillance. 

This  is  positively  proved  by  Forever-bird’s  description  of 
what  happened  to  him  after  the  powers  had  addressed  him 
as  their  grandchild  and  expressed  their  good-will : 

Everywhere  roundabout  was  I  conveyed;  roundabout  was  I 
shown  what  the  earth  everywhere  was  like,  and  likewise  the 
great  deep.  And  when  I  was  able  to  go  without  food  for  eight 
days,  then  was  the  time  that  I  truly  learned  everything  about 
how  the  sky  looked. 

Taken  by  itself,  this  might  be  accepted  as  a  purely  psy¬ 
chological  experience.  But  when  we  turn  to  another  man’s 
fasting  narrative,  the  following  sentence  strikes  our  eye : 


224 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


Concerning  all  sorts  of  things  did  I  dream, — about  what  was 
everywhere  on  earth  did  I  dream ;  and  about  the  sea,  the  suns, 
and  the  stars ;  and  about  all  things  in  the  circle  of  the  heavens 
from  whence  blew  the  winds,  did  I  dream.  .  .  .  By  a  great 
throng  of  the  sky -people  was  I  blessed;  everywhere  over  the 
earth  and  on  high  was  I  conveyed  by  them,  how  it  (all)  looked 
I  was  shown,  how  it  was  everywhere  in  the  circle  of  the  heavens 
that  I  had  dreamed  about. 

This,  however,  is  not  the  only  parallel.  In  a  tale  about  a 
youth  who  over-dreamed  he  is  represented  as  thus  speaking 
to  his  father : 

Already  now  have  I  really  dreamed  of  everything.  About 
how  the  whole  earth  looks,  about  how  the  winds  repose  from 
whence  they  blow,  have  I  learned.  And  all  kinds  of  doings 
have  I  dreamed  of.  And  also  about  everything  that  is  in  the 
sky  have  I  dreamed. 

In  short,  cosmic  exploration  is  an  integral  part  of  the  con¬ 
ventional  revelation  pattern  and  is  a  recurrent  feature  simply 
because  the  tribal  standard  molds  the  suggestible  tribes¬ 
man’s  psychic  experiences.2 

The  only  possible  meaning  of  an  attempt  to  study  in¬ 
dividual  differences  should  now  be  clear.  We  can  never  hope 
to  see  the  individual  displaying  his  inborn  religious  capacities 
in  independence  of  his  milieu.  Nevertheless  we  can  deter¬ 
mine  individual  peculiarities  by  comparing  the  behavior  of 
those  exposed  to  like  cultural  norms :  where  the  same  en¬ 
vironment  provokes  a  different  response,  the  reason  may 
safely  be  sought  in  the  respective  individuals’  original  nature. 

Sensory  Types 

When  discussing  Crow  visions  I  briefly  alluded  to  differ¬ 
ences  in  the  content  of  the  supernatural  revelation  that 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY  225 

seemed  correlated  with  mental  differences  on  the  part  of  the 
recipients.  Gabon’s  relevant  investigations  of  psychological 
variability  among  Britons  are  too  well  known  to  require  de¬ 
tailed  exposition  here.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that  according  to 
the  latest  authorities  differences  in  intensity  of  memory 
images  are  fully  established,  while  the  theory  of  quite  dis¬ 
tinct  sensory  types  has  been  practically  abandoned. 

In  fact,  it  is  now  known  to  be  very  unusual  for  an  individual 
to  be  confined  to  images  of  a  single  sense.  Nearly  every  one 
gets  visual  images  more  easily  and  frequently  than  those  of  any 
other  sense,  but  nearly  every  one  has,  from  time  to  time,  audi¬ 
tory,  kinesthetic,  tactile  and  olfactory  images.  So  that  the 
“mixed  type”  is  the  only  real  type,  the  extreme  visualist  or  au- 
dile,  etc.,  being  exceptional  and  not  typical.3 

I  know  of  no  anthropologist  who  has  made  definite  studies 
in  this  field  among  primitive  tribes,  with  the  solitary  excep¬ 
tion  of  Professor  Brown,  who  found  that  the  majority  of 
Andamanese  dreams  were  visual  or  motor  or  both.  He  does 
not  give  the  details  of  the  dreams  themselves  and  makes 
the  significant  remark  that  their  study  “is  made  very  difficult 
by  the  fact  that  it  is  never  possible  to  tell  how  far  the  orig¬ 
inal  dream  has  been  arranged  and  altered  by  the  waking  im¬ 
agination.”  4  My  own  attempts  to  secure  accounts  of  Crow 
dreams  suffered  from  the  corresponding  difficulty  that  there 
was  an  overpowering  tendency  to  present  them  in  convention¬ 
alized  form.  The  Indians  generally  recounted  seeing  a  par¬ 
ticular  type  of  landscape  symbolic  of  a  supernatural  promise 
that  they  and  their  kin  should  live  in  safety  until  the  season 
in  question.  For  example,  a  man  who  saw  the  berries  ripen¬ 
ing — probably  the  most  frequent  formula — would  feel  con¬ 
fident  of  living  until  the  next  summer;  and  so,  mutatis  mu- 


226 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


tandis ,  with  those  who  saw  the  leaves  turning  yellow  or  the 
ice  floating  down-stream. 

This  inclination  to  standardize  in  conformity  with  a  pre¬ 
conceived  norm  has  been  pointed  out  in  the  preceding  sec¬ 
tion.  Indeed  among  the  Great  Lakes  Indians  this  tendency 
has  been  carried  so  far  that  from  the  samples  available  I 
doubt  whether  appreciable  mental  variations  could  be  found 
in  the  narratives  of  visions  from  that  region,  leveled  as  they 
have  been  by  the  roller  of  conventionality.  But  in  my  fairly 
large  series  of  Crow  visions  matters  have  not  been  carried  so 
far,  and  while  I  have  myself  stressed  the  role  played  there 
by  the  preexisting  social  norms,  certain  individual  differ¬ 
ences  are  in  my  opinion  still  clearly  perceivable. 

But  before  indicating  such  variants  I  should  like  to  point 
out  that  the  Crow  data  seem  to  agree  very  well  with  the  find¬ 
ings  of  modern  psychology.  Visual  imagery  certainly  seems 
to  preponderate,  and  what  frequently  impresses  us  is  its 
vividness  as  evidenced  by  the  great  particularity  of  the  de¬ 
scriptive  detail.  One-blue-bead  not  merely  sees  a  person  on 
a  horse,  but  a  rider  with  face  and  forehead  painted  red, 
wearing  a  buckskin  shirt  with  a  chicken-hawk  feather  tied 
to  one  shoulder,  while  the  horse  is  a  buckskin  with  a  white 
mane.  Lone-tree  is  visited  by  a  white  bird,  big  as  a  Mission 
building,  with  his  face  turned  south,  the  lightning  issuing 
from  his  eyes  and  the  smoke  rising  from  where  he  sat  down; 
when  a  hailstorm  approaches,  it  leaves  a  circle  free  round 
visitant  and  visionary.  So  the  couple  who  come  to  bless 
Medicine-crow  hold  each  in  one  hand  a  hoop  ornamented 
with  feathers,  in  the  other  a  hoop  with  strawberries;  and 
various  objects,  including  the  entire  body  of  a  red-headed 
woodpecker,  are  tied  to  the  back  of  their  heads ;  further, 
half  of  the  young  woman's  face  is  painted  red.  Again,  Sore- 
tail's  eagle  patron  shows  him  a  tent  with  four  main  poles, 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 


227 


eleven  lateral  poles,  and  two  on  each  side  of  the  doorway; 
and  the  tipi  is  decorated  with  differently  colored  streamers.5 

Such  details,  apparently  quite  trivial,  are  not  so  to  the 
native :  the  Eagle  chapter  of  the  Tobacco  society  originated 
in  the  last-mentioned  vision,  while  Medicine-crow’s  revela¬ 
tion  led  to  the  institution  of  the  Strawberry  chapter.  The 
detail  is  significant  because  it  is  associated  with  the  basic 
psychic  experience  of  Crow  religious  life,  but  without  a 
certain  keenness  of  visualization  it  could  never  have  as¬ 
sumed  definite  shape  and  become  the  starting-point  of  re¬ 
ligious  innovations. 

Moreover,  our  Crow  material  falls  in  line  with  the  recent 
psychological  views  not  only  in  illustrating  the  prevalence 
of  visual  imagery  but  also  in  exemplifying  the  frequency  of 
the  “mixed  type.”  One  of  the  most  common  elements  in  the 
revelations  made  to  Indians  of  this  tribe  is  the  song  imparted 
by  the  visitant.  True,  this  is  an  integral  part  of  the  tribal 
pattern  and  in  so  far  is  socially  determined.  But  how 
regularly  could  such  a  union  of  auditory  with  visual  images 
be  suggested  by  social  tradition  if  there  were  not  a  frequent 
combination  of  the  corresponding  native  dispositions? 
From  this  angle  we  can  understand  the  character  of  the 
Tobacco  songs:  people  used  to  lie  at  or  near  the  Tobacco 
garden  with  the  hope  of  a  revelation,  and  if  they  simultane¬ 
ously  saw  an  animal  and  heard  a  song  there  would  be  a 
synthesis  of  the  two,  that  is,  the  animal  would  come  to  be 
mentioned  in  the  song.  This  auditory  susceptibility,  it 
should  be  noted,  may  be  significant  in  other  ways.  It  may 
lead  to  the  definite  recognition  of  the  supernatural  visitor, 
whose  identity  might  otherwise  remain  obscure.  Thus, 
Lone-tree  on  a  fast  was  visited  by  a  man,  who  offered  him 
food.  “I  did  not  know  it  was  the  Dipper,  but  something 
at  the  back  of  my  head  was  whispering  to  me,  ‘The  man 


228 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


giving  you  food  is  the  Dipper/  ”  It  was  only  after  this 
audition  that  my  witness,  looking  at  his  patron’s  long  hair, 
saw  the  Seven  Stars  hanging  there :  the  auditory  had  evoked 
the  relevant  visual  hallucination.  Those  who,  like  the  pres¬ 
ent  writer,  are  subject  to  auditory  hallucinations,  both  in 
presomnic  and  full  waking  condition,  will  appreciate  the 
convincing  character  of  such  experiences. 

To  cite  another  illustration  of  the  mixed  type,  we  find 
Medicine-crow  on  the  same  occasion  hearing  a  shout  and  a 
whistling  sound,  then  a  warning  of  the  approaching  visitant, 
who  turned  out  to  be  a  handsome  young  white  man  with 
a  sweet-smelling  strawberry  pinned  to  his  clothes.  Again 
Hillside  saw  a  gray-haired  buffalo,  heard  him  snorting,  and 
felt  his  licking. 

Nevertheless,  though  the  mixed  type  with  visualistic  he¬ 
gemony  seems  prevalent  in  the  Crow  tribe  as  well  as  among 
Caucasians,  certain  individuals  represent,  to  all  appearances, 
extreme  types.  Thus,  Scratches-face  is  evidently  an  audile. 
On  a  single  occasion  he  experienced  a  variety  of  auditory 
impressions  such  as  is  not  recorded  for  any  other  tribes¬ 
man:  intermittently  he  would  hear  footsteps  of  an  approach¬ 
ing  person,  then  a  man  clearing  his  throat,  then  the  snort¬ 
ing  of  a  horse,  then  a  person  asking  him  what  he  was  doing 
and  announcing  the  arrival  of  a  spirit.  Next  the  heralded 
visitant  was  heard,  also  the  tinkling  of  bells,  the  main  visi¬ 
tant’s  speech,  promiscuous  talk,  yelling,  and  whistling. 
Arm-round-the-neck,  on  the  other  hand,  gives  an  account 
that  in  spite  of  its  brevity  bristles  with  references  to  falling, 
jumping,  kicking,  driving, — presumptive  evidence  of  a 
motor  type. 

Finally,  a  very  interesting  group  of  cases  merits  consid¬ 
eration.  A  minority — but  an  appreciable  one — of  the  Crow 
visionaries  display  the  peculiarity  of  having  an  animal  or, 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 


229 


more  rarely,  an  object  enter  their  bodies.  This  tenant  has 
a  tendency  to  come  out  in  part  or  wholly  on  special  provo¬ 
cation,  such  as  the  singing  of  a  certain  tune  or  the  trans¬ 
gression  of  a  taboo;  and,  owing  to  the  otherwise  fatal  con¬ 
sequences  to  the  host,  the  parasite  must  be  coaxed  back 
again.  The  clearest  exposition  was  given  by  Muskrat,  who 
pretended  to  have  both  a  weasel  and  a  horse  inside  of  her. 
Whenever  the  Bear  Song  dance  is  performed,  some  mys¬ 
terious  power  drives  her  to  the  site,  where  she  goes  into  a 
trance.  On  one  of  these  occasions  the  tail  of  the  horse 
protruded  from  her  mouth,  but  people  took  some  warts 
from  a  horSe’s  leg,  made  incense  therefrom,  and  smoked  her 
with  it,  thus  making  the  tail  reenter  her  body.  Whenever  a 
person  bumps  into  her,  either  the  horse  tail  or  the  weasel 
will  come  out,  so  people  take  care  to  avoid  doing  so,  and  she 
keeps  a  horse  wart  about  her  for  an  antidote.  On  the  other 
hand,  Crane-head  had  a  frog  within  him,  and  in  the  winter 
people  could  hear  it  croaking  in  his  throat.  Again,  the  Egg 
chapter  of  the  Tobacco  society  originated  in  the  vision  of 
a  man  who  discovered  a  nest  of  eggs,  one  of  which  entered 
his  mouth  and  would  regularly  come  out  when  a  certain  song 
was  sung  in  the  Tobacco  ceremony. 

This  conception  is  not  confined  to  the  Crow.  Almost 
ninety  years  ago  Prince  Maximilian  of  Wied-Neuwied  noted 
it  among  the  Hidatsa  and  Mandan  of  North  Dakota,  where 
one  man  would  often  feel  a  buffalo  calf  kicking  about  inside 
of  him,  while  the  Prince  himself  saw  a  woman  produce  a 
corncob  that  was  later  conjured  back  into  her  body  with  in¬ 
cense.  Somewhat  similar  notions  have  been  reported  from 
the  Blackfoot,  Arapaho,  and  Menomini. 

So  far,  then,  we  are  merely  dealing  with  a  historical 
phenomenon :  the  idea  arose,  so  far  as  our  present  data  go, 
somewhere  between  Wisconsin  and  western  Montana  and 


230 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


was  disseminated  from  its  center  of  origin.  But  at  once  the 
query  arises,  why  only  certain  persons  in  the  tribe  are 
directly  affected  by  a  traditional  belief  accessible  to  all 
members  of  their  group.  The  combination  of  auditory  and 
visual  sensations  involved  in  the  simultaneous  acceptance 
of  a  song  and,  say,  certain  ceremonial  designs  is  practically 
universal  among  the  Crow ;  not  so  the  belief  in  a  mysterious 
parasite  of  the  type  described.  I  infer  that  this  latter  is 
due  to  an  individual  peculiarity, — to  an  excessive  sensi¬ 
tiveness  to  tactile,  kinesthetic  and  visceral  impressions. 
Given  such  idiosyncracy,  the  traditional  conception — itself 
ultimately  intelligible  as  a  product  of  this  phenomenon — 
strikes  a  responsive  chord,  while  the  normal  “mixed  type” 
fails  to  react. 

Lest  it  be  supposed  that  such  phenomena  as  I  have  cited 
have  a  restricted  distribution  in  the  world,  reference  may 
here  be  made  to  the  “Bushman  presentiments.”  Among 
these  South  Africans  there  was  general  reliance  on  the  in¬ 
ferences  to  be  drawn  from  a  distinctive  “tapping”  in  the 
body,  which  was  interpreted  according  to  a  traditional  sys¬ 
tem.  Thus,  when  a  man  felt  a  tapping  in  the  lower  part  of 
the  back  of  his  neck,  it  meant  that  an  ostrich  was  coming 
and  was  scratching  himself  in  a  corresponding  spot;  “when 
a  woman  who  had  gone  away  is  returning  to  the  house,  the 
man  who  is  sitting  there  feels  on  his  shoulders  the  thong  with 
which  the  woman’s  child  is  slung  over  her  shoulders;” 
again,  to  quote  Dr.  Bleek’s  witness,  “I  feel  a  sensation  in  the 
calves  of  my  legs  when  the  springbok’s  blood  is  going  to 
run  down  them.”  6 

Psychologically  these  manifestations  are  evidently  equiva¬ 
lent  to  the  kinesthetic  and  visceral  sensations  of  the  Hidatsa 
or  Crow,  and  when  we  are  told  that  the  stupid  Bushmen  who 
do  not  understand  the  presentiments  get  into  trouble  and 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY  231 

may  even  be  killed  by  lions  we  have  fair  evidence  of  the 
recognition  of  individual  differences :  the  “stupid”  ones  are 
obviously  those  who  either  have  no  such  sensations  or  ex¬ 
perience  them  to  so  moderate  a  degree  as  to  attach  little 
significance  to  them. 

Suggestibility  and  Independence 

Important  as  may  be  the  individual  differences  noted 
above  in  determining  the  details  of  a  psychic  experience,  a 
far  greater  importance  in  the  religious  life  of  the  individual 
must  be  ascribed  to  the  degree  of  his  suggestibility.  Does 
he  automatically  bow  to  the  ideas  presented  by  an  elder 
wielding  authority?  Is  he  susceptible  to1  the  more  insidi¬ 
ous  influence  of  an  impersonal  social  atmosphere?  Is  he 
willing  to  set  at  naught  the  traditional  heritage  of  belief 
and  place  reliance  mainly  on  his  own  experiences?  The 
measure  in  which  he  corresponds  to  the  several  categories 
implied  in  these  questions  will  make  him  a  member  of  the 
rank  and  file,  a  veritable  pillar  of  society,  or  a  doubting 
Thomas  threatening  to  sap  its  foundation  by  his  very  ex¬ 
istence.  The  older  ethnology  took  little  conscious  interest  in 
such  differences  of  outlook,  yet  it  is  not  difficult  to  glean 
some  evidence  of  their  existence  from  the  descriptive 
records.  Only  we  must  make  due  allowance  for  the  extrane¬ 
ous  pressure  under  which  the  individual  acts :  a  Winnebago 
boy  under  the  unremitting  surveillance  of  his  parents  is  not 
the  relatively  free  agent  represented  by  a  young  Crow. 
Deviation  from  the  traditional  norm  argues  a  far  greater 
strength  of  mind  in  the  former  than  in  the  latter.  But  in 
appraising  the  subjective  phenomena  involved,  considerable 
caution  is  imperative.  “Suggestibility”  is  not  by  any  means 
a  uniform  thing:  psychologists  tell  us  that  there  are  various 


232 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


tests  of  suggestibility,  and  an  individual  who  succumbs  to 
one  does  not  necessarily  succumb  to  another,  so  that  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  we  should  baldly  speak  of  one  individ¬ 
ual  as  more  suggestible  than  another.”  7  It  is  obvious  that 
an  incapacity  to  receive  ideas  from  without  may  have  quite 
another  cause  than  intellectual  independence;  nothing  more 
may  be  involved  than  dullness  or  lack  of  interest.  Again, 
the  very  exuberance  of  the  novice’s  imagination,  the  ex¬ 
alted  anticipations  aroused  in  him,  may  build  up  a  fantasy 
by  the  side  of  which  any  possible  real  experience  is  so  dis¬ 
appointing  as  to  be  ruled  out. 

The  relevant  problems  are,  I  think,  neatly  illustrated  in 
a  human  document  rescued  for  science  by  Dr.  Paul  Radin.8 
His  Winnebago  hero,  “S.  B.,”  recounts  the  typical  puberty 
experiences, — the  preparatory  abstinence  from  food,  the 
detailed  instructions  by  his  elders  when  he  was  definitely 
sent  out  to  fast  for  a  blessing,  the  visits  and  further  ad¬ 
monitions  of  his  father  during  the  fast  itself.  But  “in 
spite  of  it  all,  I  experienced  nothing  unusual.”  Dreading, 
however,  a  prolongation  of  the  fast,  S.  B.  pretended  to  have 
had  a  revelation  and  received  food.  Subsequently,  in  obedi¬ 
ence  to  the  craving  for  social  recognition  or  the  prompting 
of  eminent  men,  he  repeatedly  fasted  but  through  it  all  “I 
was  not  in  the  least  conscious  of  any  dreams  or  blessings.” 
This  the  narrator  retrospectively  imputes  to  his  lack  of  re¬ 
ligious  fervor  at  the  time, — his  failure  to  concentrate  on 
anything  but  outward  glory  and  the  favor  of  women :  “I 
was  never  lowly  at  heart  and  never  really  desired  the  bless¬ 
ing  of  the  spirits.”  Subsequently  he  is  trained  for  initia¬ 
tion  into  the  secret  Medicine  Dance  and  learns  that  instead 
of  being  actually  shot  and  revived  by  the  old-stagers  he  is 
merely  to  feign  death  and  resuscitation  at  their  hands.  An 
intense  shock  of  disappointment  comes  over  him  and  he 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY  233 

becomes  skeptical  of  all  the  things  held  sacred  by  the  Win¬ 
nebago.  Later  he  becomes  a  toper  and  frequently  boasts 
of  his  alleged  blessings.  On  one  occasion  he  promises  to 
intercede  with  four  female  spirits  on  behalf  of  a  woman 
big  with  child,  and  the  ease  with  which  she  for  the  first 
time  gives  birth  demonstrates  his  pretensions  not  only  to 
the  mother  and  her  kin,  but  even  to  himself :  “I  was  sur¬ 
prised.  Perhaps  I  am  really  a  holy  man,  I  thought.”  After 
a  while  S.‘  B.’s  parents  came  under  the  sway  of  the  new 
Peyote  cult  that  menaced  the  very  existence  of  the  older 
faith  since  the  votaries  “insisted  that  all  the  other  cere¬ 
monies  were  wrong  and  must  be  abandoned  and  because 
they  destroyed  war-bundles,  medicine-bags,  etc.,  everything 
dear  to  the  hearts  of  the  conservative  Winnebago.”  S.  B. 
resented  this  iconoclasm  as  much  as  the  avei  age  tribes 
man,  but  after  joining  his  converted  kin  and  receiving 
manifold  favors  at  their  hands  he  consented  to  partake  of 
the  new  medicine.  For  a  time  he  maintained  an  expectant 
and  even  negative  attitude,  as  of  old  toward  the  ancient  re 
ligion  of  his  people.  But  when  he  beheld  some  of  the  gorge¬ 
ous  color  visions  induced  by  the  drug,  his  skepticism  was 
swept  aside  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  and  he  became  a 

full-fledged  peyote-worshiper. 

Now,  as  Dr.  Radin  points  out,  what  S.  B.  had  striven  for 
in  all  his  previous  religious  experiences  was  a  distinctive 
thrill,  an  inward  change.  He  had  been  keyed  up  to  expect 
it  from  the  normal  puberty  rite  and  fasting  generally,  but 
it  never  came.  From  this  we  can  hardly  conclude  that  he 
was  less  suggestible  than  other  boys,  but  he  was  certainly 
not  suggestible  in  the  same  way.  I  hazard  the  guess  from 
the  evidence  presented  that  he  was  like  Ibsen  s  Brand  an 
“all  or  nothing”  spirit  of  excessive  suggestibility.  Other 
boys  were  willing  to  present  any  image  that  appeared  dur- 


234 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


in g  their  vigil  as  answering  to  the  experience  depicted  by 
their  elders;  his  expectations  had  been  raised  so  high  that 
they  acted  as  a  comter-suggestion,  so  that  he  could  retro¬ 
spectively  declare  that  “I  experienced  nothing  unusual” 
where  a  normal  youth  would  have  been  quite  content  to 
regard  himself  as  visited  by  a  mysterious  agency.  But, 
whether  this  be  or  be  not  a  valid  interpretation,  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  some  real  individual  difference  of  psychology 
is  involved  and  that  it  had  a  most  important  effect  on  S.  B.’s 
religious  life.  Apart  from  this  particular  case,  it  is  clear  from 
the  parental  admonitions  reproduced  by  Dr.  Radin  that  “not 
every  one  was  able  to  enter  into  communication  with  the 
spirits”  and  that  in  view  of  this  contingency  a  vicarious 
reliance  on  medicinal  herbs  was  enjoined  by  a  father  when 
lecturing  his  adolescent  son.  In  other  words,  different  per¬ 
sons  behave  differently  under  similar  circumstances  and 
after  subjection  to  similar  exhortations. 

The  degree  of  suggestibility  is  of  course  inversely  pro¬ 
portional  to  the  subject’s  willingness  to  rely  on  his  direct 
experience,  but  it  is  again  necessary  to  take  into  account  the 
amount  of  pressure  exerted  from  without.  It  is  easy 
enough  for  a  Crow,  free  as  he  is  from  the  superintendence 
of  elders  and  shamans,  to  accept  whatever  communication 
may  be  granted  by  the  spirits  he  invokes.  Hence  when 
we  find  occasional  instances  of  men  who  dare  not  avail 
themselves  of  their  blessings  without  a  previous  conference 
with  the  sages  of  the  tribe,  they  may  well  be  reproached  for 
timidity.  But  the  case  of  the  Ojibwa  or  Winnebago  boy, 
incessantly  drilled  and  harried  by  his  parents  as  to  what 
he  ought  and  ought  not  to  get  in  the  way  of  a  revelation, 
is  not  comparable;  and  here  it  would  require  unusual  au¬ 
dacity  to  break  away  from  the  fetters  of  social  and  family 
tradition. 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY  235 

Again,  when  we  find  an  abundance  of  versions  regarding 
the  hereafter  in  tribes  of  such  differing  cultural  level  as  the 
Andamanese,  the  Shoshoni,  or  the  Polynesians,  this  should 
not  be  taken  to  prove  an  extraordinary  prevalence  of  lati- 
tudinarianism.  It  may  mean  nothing  more  than  that  there 
is  an  absence  of  obligatory  sentiment  on  the  subject,  and 
where  there  is  no  orthodoxy  there  cannot  be  any  hetero¬ 
doxy.  Why  ‘shouldn’t  Red-shirt  accept  the  evidence  of  his 
senses  to  the  effect  that  the  dead  live  underground  rather 
than  in  the  sky,  as  he  had  supposed,  if  that  notion,  however 
popular,  was  not  sanctioned  by  any  authority,  formal  or  in¬ 
formal  ? 

The  matter  is  further  complicated  by  the  purely  personal 
factor,  by  those  temperamental  differences  that  make  it  pos¬ 
sible  for  the  same  man  to  resent  the  leadership  of  one  hero 
and  blindly  to  trust  himself  to  another.  Whatever  we  may 
think  of  the  formal  schemes  broached  in  recent  and  former 
times  for  the  division  of  mankind  into  psychological  cate¬ 
gories,  the  commonsense  experience  of  the  ages  supports 
the  existence  of  distinct  types,  however  hard  it  may  be  to 
define  them.  Sometimes,  but  by  no  means  always,  the 
leader  is  merely  a  magnified  edition  of  the  follower.  In 
other  cases,  adherence  seems  to  rest  precisely  on  a  sense  of 
difference  in  a  complementary  sense.  Again,  the  peculiar 
circumstances  of  the  situation  may  lead  to  the  acceptance  of 
a  prophet  as  “true”  or  his  rejection  as  “false.”  We  must 
therefore  again  proceed  with  caution  before  translating  into 
direct  and  even  quasi-quantitative  psychological  terms  a 
concrete  observation  apparently  illustrating  greater  or  lesser 
suggestibility.  For  instance,  among  the  Crow  Tobacco 
Dancers  of  the  Lodge  Grass  district  the  prestige  of  Medi¬ 
cine-Crow  succeeded  in  substituting  a  crane  for  the  tradi¬ 
tional  otter-skin  carried  in  a  procession.  But  I  have  heard  an 


236  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

Indian  more  or  less  sneeringly  refer  to  the  substitution  as  a 
mere  novelty  introduced  by  Medicine-Crow.  The  critic, 
however,  was  not  a  rationalist :  he  was  not  challenging  the 
value  of  the  sacred  object  carried  on  the  occasion,  he  did  not 
consider  that  the  otter  had,  in  principle,  precisely  the  same 
sanction  as  the  crane,  to  wit,  an  individual’s  revelation.  He 
merely  had  not  for  some  reason  or  other  come  under  the 
spell  of  Medicine-crow’s  personality  and  accordingly  dis¬ 
played  the  natural  enough  predilection  for  an  old  rather  than 
a  new  ritual  device. 

But  there  are  not  lacking  instances  of  genuine  independ¬ 
ence  and  perhaps  the  most  interesting  are  those  of  the  two 
Tongan  kings  described  by  Mariner.  Finau  I,  with  char¬ 
acteristic  cunning,  utilized  the  prevalent  beliefs  in  execut¬ 
ing  his  own  purposes,  but  seems  to  have  been  singularly  free 
from  their  sway.  He  went  so  far  as  to  confess  to  Mariner 
that  he  doubted  the  very  existence  of  the  gods;  and  when 
met  with  the  argument  that  he  had  professed  himself  to  be 
possessed  by  the  spirit  of  one  of  his  predecessors,  he  re¬ 
plied :  “True!  there  may  be  gods;  but  what  the  priests  tell 
us  about  their  power  over  mankind,  I  believe  to  be  all  false.” 
When  his  daughter  died,  he  planned  to  execute  the  priest  of 
one  of  his  patron  deities,  a  design  only  thwarted  by  his 
own  death.  His  sacrilegious  impiety  constantly  scandalized 
the  people,  who  marveled  at  his  continued  prosperity  when 
he  was  so  audaciously  throwing  down  the  gauntlet  to  the 
gods.  On  one  occasion,  when  he  was  about  tO'  proceed 
against  the  enemy,  one  of  the  chiefs  sneezed, — an  evil  omen. 
But  Finau  wrathfully  clenched  his  fists  and  uttered  this  cry 
of  defiance:  “Crowd,  all  ye  gods,  to  the  protection  of  these 
people,  nevertheless  I  will  wreak  my  vengeance  on  them 
tenfold!  Finau  II,  notwithstanding  his  intelligence  (see 
below),  was  not  wholly  free  from  the  last-mentioned  super- 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY  237 

stition,  for  on  a  solemn  occasion  he  came  near  slaying 
Mariner  for  an  untimely  sneeze,  and  the  subsequent  ex¬ 
planation,  that  he  merely  feared  its  effect  on  his  attendants, 
hardly  rings  true.  However,  as  might  be  expected,  he  also 
showed  great  independence  and  abolished  two  deep-rooted 
customs,  the  sacrifice  of  the  Tuitonga’s  chief  wife  on  her 
husband’s  death,  as  well  as  the  Tuitonga’s  office  itself, 
though  among  his  subjects  “it  was  whispered  about  that 
some  great  misfortune  would  happen  to  the  country.”  9 

The  greatest  men  never  wholly  succeed  in  escaping  the 
impress  of  their  time,  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  point  out  all 
manner  of  inconsistencies  in  the  notions  of  the  two  Tongan 
rulers.  The  elder,  his  infidelity  notwithstanding,  evidently 
expected  succor  from  the  family  god  during  his  daughter’s 
illness;  the  son  was  not  above  conceiving  a  compass  as  in¬ 
spired  by  a  god.  Nevertheless,  the  two  Finaus  doubtless 
stand  out  as  extraordinarily  free-thinking  in  their  mental 

habits. 

This  negative  activity  of  theirs,  however,  again  reminds 
us  of  the  subtle  relation  between  individual  charactei  and 
the  culture  of  a  group.  A  person  endowed  with  Finau  IBs 
ability  and  outlook  could  not  possibly  have  exerted  any 
noticeable  effect  on  Tongan  faith  and  ritual  if  he  had  hap¬ 
pened  to  belong  to  the  plebeian  ranks.  It  was  the  peculiar 
culture  of  Tonga  at  that  time,  involving  as  it  did  the  concen¬ 
tration  of  temporal  power  in  Finau’s  hands,  that  enabled 
him  to  abrogate  the  time-honored  pontificate  of  the  Tui- 
tonga.  Without  so  enlightened  a  ruler  that  dignity  might 
have  long  survived,  but  enlightenment  and  sovereign  power 
were  both  prerequisite  to  bring  about  the  result. 


238 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 
Intellectual  Powers 


In  one  of  his  books  on  the  Thonga  M.  Junod  points  out 
how  much  his  informants  vary  in  narrative  skill:  where  one 
contents  himself  with  a  bald  summary  of  events,  another  will 
give  the  most  vivid  detail,  even  to  the  point  of  pantomimi- 
cally  representing  the  actions  of  his  characters.  Every  field- 
worker  is  able  to  provide  corroboration  from  his  own  ex¬ 
perience.  What  is  so  conspicuously  true  of  the  literary 
sphere  holds  in  equal  measure  for  the  intellectual  as  a  whole, 
and  the  differences  in  question  cannot  be  ignored  in  the 
present  context.  For  though  I  have  insisted  again  and 
again  that  the  essence  of  religion  is  to  be  sought  elsewhere, 
this  implies  a  lesser  weighting,  not  an  elimination,  of  the 
intellect,  which  of  course  continues  to  operate  somehow  in 
association  with  every  mental  state.  Moreover,  what 
begins  as  a  predominantly  intellectual  theory  may  become 
secondarily  an  object  of  emotion.  Views  as  to  the  nature 
of  the  soul,  cosmogony,  and  a  host  of  other  subjects  may 
conceivably  be  divorced  from  religion  at  the  start,  yet  sub¬ 
sequently  become  indissolubly  linked  with  it.  Such  elabo¬ 
rate  systems  as  have  been  concocted  by  the  Polynesians  or 
the  Dakota  are  clearly  not  random  expressions  of  the  “folk- 
soul”  but  the  joint  product  of  a  number  of  comparatively 
refined  intellects  who  have  grappled  with  the  riddles  of  the 
universe. 

That  savage  society  verily  produces  intelligences  with  a 
definitely  speculative  bent,  can  no  longer  be  doubted.  Thus, 
Mariner  was  struck  by  the  mental  operations  of  the  Tongan 
ruler  whom,  for  convenience’  sake,  we  have  called  Finau 
II.  His  father,  Finau  I,  had  been  a  man  of  ambition  and 
Machiavellian  cunning;  his  uncle,  Finau  Fiji,  was  a  man 
of  sound  enough  judgment,  based  on  stability  of  tempera- 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY  239 

ment  and  considerable  experience.  But  neither  displayed 
a  tithe  of  the  younger  sovereign’s  intellectual  parts.  He  was 
constantly  visiting  the  workshops  of  the  skilled  artisans. 
He  delighted  in  poetry  and  restored  the  concerts  by  profes¬ 
sional  minstrels  which  had  been  abolished  by  his  father. 
Novel  ideas  were  readily  absorbed  by  him  and  combined 
with  unusual  alertness.  Best  of  all,  he  took  pleasure  in 
gratifying  his  reasoning  faculty : 

He  had  learnt  the  mechanism  of  a  gun-lock  by  his  own  pure 
investigation :  one  day  on  taking  off  the  lock  of  a  pistol  to  clean 
it,  he  was  astonished  to  find  it  somewhat  differently  contrived, 
and  a  little  more  complicated  than  the  common  lock,  which  he 
had  thought  so  clever  and  perfect  that  he  could  not  conceive 
anything  better ;  on  seeing  this,  however,  he  was  somewhat  puz¬ 
zled,  at  first  with  the  mechanism,  and  afterwards  with  its  su¬ 
periority  to  the  common  lock,  but  he  would  not  have  it  explained 
to  him;  it  was  an  interesting  puzzle,  which  he  wished  to  have 
the  pleasure  of  solving  himself  :  at  length  he  succeeded,  and  was 
as  pleased  as  if  he  had  found  a  treasure,  and  in  the  afternoon  at 
kava  he  was  not  contented  till  he  had  made  all  his  chiefs  and 
matabooles  understand  it  also. 

Similarly,  a  practical  demonstration  of  the  correctness  of 
Mariner’s  lectures  on  the  pulse  put  the  ruler  into  such  good 
humor  that  he  dispensed  with  the  corporal  punishment  about 

to  be  inflicted  on  one  of  his  servants.10 

Junod  has  given  his  impressions  of  an  equivalent  Bantu 
personality,  Rangane.  While  the  majority  of  his  tribes¬ 
men  never  troubled  themselves  about  the  creation  of  the 
world,  Rangane  from  a  boy  sought  an  answer  to  the  riddle, 
rejecting  the  curt  folk-explanations  of  his  mother  and  older 
Thonga  men,  and  finally  embracing  the  circumstantial  ac¬ 
count  of  the  Bible.  M.  Junod  writes ; 


240  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

I  remember  his  face  beaming  with  joy  when  he  told  his  story. 
But  such  earnest,  philosophical  natures  are  very  rare  amongst 
Natives,  and  Rangane  was  an  exception.  He  died  when  still  at 
the  beginning  of  his  course  of  study;  and  he  was  vastly  superior 
to  most  of  his  comrades  as  regards  religious  perception.11 

Our  informant  refers  to  men  of  this  type  as  “religious 
geniuses” :  I  should  rather  term  them  philosophical  ones. 
But  there  can  be  no  question  that  where  the  religious  emo¬ 
tion  is  joined  with  such  speculative  interests  and  a  domi¬ 
nant  personality  to  boot,  that  type  of  leadership  resulting 
fiom  the  combination  may  well  be  ascribed  to  a  “religious 
genius.”  For  example,  had  the  younger  Finau  taken  a 
definitely  spiritual  attitude  towards  life,  his  powerful  intel¬ 
lect  might  have  reshaped  and  elevated  the  traditional  faith 
of  his  people  and  would  have  made  him  a  positive  rather 
than  a  mainly  destructive  agency  in  the  history  of  Polynesian 
religion. 

Various  Idiosyncrasies 

Suggestibility,  it  has  been  found,  is  far  from  being  a 
simple  psychological  phenomenon.  Accordingly,  in  segre¬ 
gating  it  I  do  not  mean  to  assert  that  some  of  the  features 
there  discussed  do  not  correspond  to  or  at  least  overlap 
phenomena  that  can  be  conveniently  regarded  from  another 
angle.  Thus,  when  one  Crow  youth,  privation  and  torture 
notwithstanding,  fails  to  obtain  a  vision  in  trial  after  trial, 
while  another  repeatedly  succeeds,  nay,  may  acquire  a  revela¬ 
tion  without  a  deliberate  quest,  the  difference  can  be  put  in 
terms  of  suggestibility.  But  we  have  already  seen  that  the 
result  may  have  such  antithetical  causes  as  hyper-sensitive¬ 
ness  and  insusceptibility.  It  is  therefore  imperative  to  in- 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 


241 


quire  with  what  temperamental  or  other  qualities  a  given 
form  of  “the  religious  impulse”  is  correlated.  That  differ¬ 
ences  in  its  intensity  are  largely  recognized  by  the  primitive 
folk  themselves,  is  proved  by  some  cases  in  which  religious 
activity  is  inherited.  For  often  there  is  no  automatic  trans¬ 
mission  of  authority  to,  say,  the  eldest-born:  a  Thonga 
physician,  for  example,  passed  on  his  art  to  that  one  of  his 
sons  or  nephews  who  was  most  strongly  “induced  by  his 
heart”  to  devote  himself  to  the  profession.12  The  question 
is,  What  are  these  inducements  and  their  accompani¬ 
ments  ? 

In  many  cases,  no  doubt,  a  definitely  religious  attitude  is 
quite  consistent  with  a  normal  mentality,  heightened  in  cer¬ 
tain  of  its  phases.  The  Andamanese  believe  that  certain  men 
can  communicate  with  spirits  in  their  dreams,  and  this  is 
one  source  of  shamanism  among  them. 

If  a  man  or  boy  experiences  dreams  that  are  in  any  way  ex¬ 
traordinary,  particularly  if  in  his  dreams  he  sees  spirits,  either 
the  spirits  of  dead  persons  known  to  him  when  alive  or  spirits 
of  the  forest  or  the  sea,  he  may  acquire  in  time  the  reputation 
of  a  medicine-man. 

To  be  sure,  his  claims  must  be  submitted  to  the  test  of  ex¬ 
perience  before  he  is  generally  recognized;  nothing  suc¬ 
ceeds  like  success  in  primitive  society,  and  the  variation  that 
may  be  subjectively  significant  must  conform  to  chance  cor¬ 
roboration  in  the  world  of  reality  before  it  can  become  a 
cultural  factor.  Psychologically,  we  may  say  that  while 
all  normal  Andamanese  have  dreams,  and  may  even  have 
dreams  of  spirits,  constant  and  vivid  dreaming  would  pre¬ 
dispose  a  man  to  shamanism.13 

However,  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the  shaman  or 
priest — in  other  words,  the  preeminently  religious  person — 


242 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


so  frequently  represents  a  clear  deviation  from  the  psychic 
norm.  That  is  to  say,  whatever  else  may  be  implied,  the 
protagonist  of  religion  is  often  a  pathological  case,  a  “neuro¬ 
tic'*  in  the  modern  psychiatric  vernacular.  Thus,  Bogoras 
writes  of  the  Chukchi : 

Nervous  and  highly  excitable  temperaments  are  most  sus¬ 
ceptible  to  the  shamanistic  call.  The  shamans  among  the 
Chuckchi  with  whom  I  conversed  were  as  a  rule  extremely 
excitable,  almost  hysterical,  and  not  a  few  of  them  were  half 
crazy.  Their  cunning  in  the  use  of  deceit  in  their  art  closely 
resembled  the  cunning  of  a  lunatic.14 

One  of  Bogoras’s  acquaintances,  whose  grandfather  had 
likewise  communed  with  the  spirits  and  was  not  improbably 
tainted  with  a  hereditary  tendency  to  hysteria,  would  fly 
into  a  rage  on  the  slightest  provocation  and  attempt  to 
assault  even  a  Russian  cossack.  Another  shaman,  Scratch- 
ing-woman,  was  so  excitable  that  he  could  not  sit  still  for 
any  length  of  time  but  would  leap  up  with  violent  gestures ; 
and  when  he  was  in  drink,  all  knives  had  to  be  placed  out 
of  his  reach  to  prevent  a  brawl.  Other  shamans  were  con¬ 
spicuous  for  an  incessant  nervous  twitching  of  the  face, 
and  a  female  practitioner  had  actually  been  insane  for  three 
years,  “during  which  time  her  household  had  taken  such 
precautions,  that  she  could  do  no  harm  to  the  people  or  to 
herself.”  These  nervous  idiosyncrasies  are  not  without 
importance  when  we  remember  that  one  of  the  characteristic 
performances  of  the  Chukchi  shaman,  especially  when  go¬ 
ing  in  search  of  a  patient’s  missing  soul,  consists  in  violent 
singing  and  drumming,  followed  by  a  trance,  during  which 
the  doctor’s  soul  is  supposed  to  visit  his  guardian  spirits 
and  secure  their  advice.  Regarding  the  psychology  of  these 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY  243 

states,  I  need  merely  refer  to  the  explanation  already  offered 
for  the  inspirational  ecstasy  of  Polynesian  priests. 

Among  the  Thonga  corresponding  peculiarities  are  not 
less  important.  Here  spectacular  nervous  afflictions  lead 
to  the  theory  that  the  patient  is  possessed  by  a  spirit, — 
oddly  enough,  not  one  of  the  ancestors  of  his  own  tribe,  but 
by  a  Zulu  spirit.  A  man  will  come  home  trembling,  attack 
his  fellow-villagers,  fall  unconscious,  suffer  abnormal  pains 
in  the  chest,  become  emaciated,  yawn  and  hiccough  to  an 
unusual  extent.  As  another  instance  of  how  the  individual 
is  inevitably  dependent  on  the  culture  of  his  community,  we 
find  that  the  diagnosis  of  possession  must  be  established 
by  the  customary  throwing  of  the  divinatory  bones.  The 
possessed  puts  himself  into  the  hands  of  an  exorcist  and, 
when  cured,  himself  advances  to  the  status  of  an  exorcist, 
diviner,  prophet  or  wonder-worker.  Sometimes  he  becomes 
the  originator  of  a  new  school,  developing  novel  rites  of 
exorcism  and  applying  hitherto  unknown  drugs.  The  spirits 
who  once  tormented  him  are  now  his  benefactors,  and  he 
will  show  his  gratitude  by  daily  acts  of  devotion  that  eclipse 
the  piety  with  which  the  ordinary  Thonga  worships  his  an¬ 
cestral  gods.15 

In  this  connection  it  is  impossible  wholly  to  ignore  sexual 
anomalies  already  mentioned  in  connection  with  historical 
problems,  for  in  some  primitive  communities  what  we  should 
regard  as  pathological  phenomena  in  the  sexual  sphere  are 
intimately  related  with  religious  activity.  The  berdache 
(French  Canadian,  bardache )  or  “  hermaphrodite”  of  popu¬ 
lar  speech  was  a  familiar  figure  in  not  a  few  American  In¬ 
dian  tribes.  According  to  all  accounts  anatomically  a  genu¬ 
ine  male,  he  nevertheless  affected  the  garb  of  a  woman, 
mastered  feminine  accomplishments,  in  which  he  often  ex¬ 
celled,  and  indulged  in  homosexual  intercourse.  The  Crow 


244 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


at  one  time  had  relatively  many  of  these  psychiatric  cases 
and  insisted  that  it  was  their  nature  to  dress  and  act  as  they 
did;  to  them  belonged  the  definite  task  of  chopping  down  the 
sacred  tree  of  the  Sun  Dance.  I  saw  presumably  the  last 
representative  of  the  species.  The  Omaha  believed  that 
berdaches  became  such  as  a  result  of  their  first  puberty  quest 
of  a  vision.  The  Moon  would  appear,  holding  in  one  hand 
the  bow  and  arrows  symbolic  of  the  warrior’s  life  and  in 
the  other  the  pack-strap  used  by  women.  By  quickly  cross¬ 
ing  his  hands,  the  visitant  might  deceive  the  visionary  into 
grasping  the  badge  of  womanhood.  “In  such  a  case  he 
could  not  help  acting  the  woman,  speaking,  dressing,  and 
working  just  as  Indian  women  used  to  do.”  Miss  Fletcher 
tells  of  a  case  in  which  a  man  tried  to  resist  the  implications 
of  his  experience  but  found  the  conflict  unbearable  and 
committed  suicide.16 

The  psychological  interpretation  of  these  cases  is  not 
especially  difficult.  The  fact  that  not  every  person  in  the 
community,  that  only  a  small  percentage  had  the  berdache 
vision  proves  a  predisposition  to  perversity  on  the  part  of 
the  exceptional  individual.  But  the  idiosyncrasy  is  no  doubt 
sincerely  interpreted  in  accordance  with  the  vision  pattern, 
as  though  it  were  the  creature  and  not  the  author  of  the 
vision  seen. 

Very  similar  transformations  have  been  recorded  among 
the  Chukchi,  where  in  addition  some  women  likewise  as¬ 
sumed  the  character  o^  men,  though  this  case  was  of  rarer 
occurrence  and  eluded  Mr.  Bogoras’s  personal  observation. 
The  Chukchi  berdaches  marry  men,  but  they  are  believed 
to  be  wedded  to  spirit  husbands,  who  act  as  their  special 
protectors  and  issue  orders  through  them,  so  that  the  human 
spouse  is  degraded  to  a  rather  humble  status  in  the  house¬ 
hold.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  “transformed  shamans” 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 


245 


enjoy  a  position  of  special  prestige:  they  are  supposed  to 
excel  in  all  shamanistic  practices,  even  in  that  of  ventrilo¬ 
quism,  which  is  barred  to  normal  women;  even  other  sha¬ 
mans  dread  the  berdache  because  of  the  power  of  his  super¬ 
natural  patrons.17 

It  is  interesting  to  find  similar  conceptions  in  the  south¬ 
eastern  corner  of  Asia,  to  wit,  in  Borneo.  The  highest 
grade  of  shaman,  manang ,  among  the  Sea  Dyak  is  that  of 
the  manang  bali  or  “changed  shaman,”  that  is,  one  who  has 
changed  his  sex,  assumed  feminine  dress  and  occupies  him¬ 
self  with  female  pursuits.  The  transformation  is  said  to  be 
due  to  a  supernatural  command  conveyed  on  three  distinct 
occasions  in  dreams.  Disobedience  would  mean  death. 
Owing  to  his  higher  rank,  the  manang  bali  naturally  receives 
much  higher  fees  than  ordinary  doctors  and  is  summoned 
when  others  have  failed  to  effect  a  cure.  The  wealth  thus 
accumulated  leads  men  to  marry  a  manang  bali,  but  the 
role  of  these  husbands  seems  as  unenviable  as  that  of  their 
Chukchi  equivalents.18 

It  may  not  be  superfluous  at  this  point  to  revert  to  a  sub¬ 
ject  broached  in  the  last  chapter.  If  such  phenomena  as 
have  been  described  in  the  preceding  paragraphs  occur,  have 
I  not  been  over-confident  in  my  repudiation  of  the  theory 
that  religion  is  founded  in  the  sex  instinct?  Such  an  objec¬ 
tion  would  be  the  result  of  a  confusion  of  the  issues  involved. 
As  I  have  already  explicitly  stated,  sex  and  religion  are 
bound  to  come  into  contact  at  times.  It  may  even  be  ad¬ 
mitted  without  hesitation  that  such  association  may  be  of 
great  importance  to  the  individual,  nay,  to  the  tribe,  as  in 
Siberia  and  Borneo.  But  what  is  the  nature  of  the  bond? 
The  Plains  Indian  berdache  does  not  have  a  vision  because 
he  is  an  invert,  for  of  all  the  men  in  a  generation  who  have 
visions  only  a  handful  are  inverts.  What  he  does  is  to 


246  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

justify  his  innate  propensities  by  an  unconscious  rationaliza¬ 
tion  that  shall  make  his  conduct  fit  into  the  scheme  of  tribal 
convention.  His  spirit  is  that  of  any  person  who  cites 
divine  support  and  prompting  for  what  he  craves  to  do.  The 
tribesmen  who  accept  the  rationalization  as  a  legitimate  ex¬ 
planation  would  not  do  so  except  for  their  preexisting  idea 
of  the  Sacred,  that  is,  the  idea  that  a  visionary  experience 
imposes  an  obligation  which  cannot  be  safely  ignored.  The 
berdache  phenomena  are  not  the  root  of  Plains  Indian  reli¬ 
gion,  they  pre-suppose  its  existence.  Even  where  the  invert 
plays  a  dominant  part  in  religion,  as  in  Borneo,  similar  rea¬ 
soning  can  be  applied.  For  whence  comes  the  notion  of  su¬ 
pernatural  commands  in  dreams  that  ostensibly  underlies  the 
manang  bali  institution?  The  sense  of  the  Supernatural  can¬ 
not  be  created  by  the  perverse  longings  of  the  shaman;  it  is 
already  present  in  the  minds  of  his  audience  or  his  plea  would 
fail  to  be  even  intelligible.  On  the  other  hand,  so  far  as 
the  very  abnormality  of  his  case  makes  upon  them  a  pro¬ 
found  impression,  it  is  evidently  not  because  of  their  own  sex 
cravings  but  because  the  Extraordinary  qua  Extraordinary 
is  of  basic  significance.  Nothing  in  these  data  thus  justi¬ 
fies  the  derivation  of  the  religious  impulse  from  sex:  there 
is  a  conjunction,  not  a  genetic  connection  with  sex  as  the 
cause  and  religion  as  the  effect. 

Leadership 

Leadership  in  religion,  as  elsewhere,  is  psychologically  a 
very  complex  and  anything  but  uniform  phenomenon.  As 
the  musical  genius  is  not  necessarily  the  man  who  possesses 
to  the  highest  degree  the  specifically  musical  talents,  so  the 
religious  creator,  that  is,  the  producer  of  new  religious 
values  for  his  group,  is  not  necessarily  the  one  who  spon- 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 


247 


taneously  displays  the  most  intense  or  readiest  religious 
emotion;  and  the  same  holds  for  him  who,  instead  of  en¬ 
riching  the  cultural  content  of  his  people,  merely  transmits 
the  social  heritage  in  unaltered  form.  That  certain  qualities 
of  mind  are  prerequisite  to  leadership  in  religion  as  in  poli¬ 
tics,  requires  no  special  affirmation.  Apart  from  the  a  priori 
certainty  of  the  proposition,  we  can  point  to  the  frequent 
transmission  of  authority  from  one  member  of  a  family  to 
another,  which,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  by  no  means  fol¬ 
lows  a  mechanical  law  of  succession  but  doubtless  exempli¬ 
fies  the  hereditary  character  of  certain  innate  qualities.  The 
prophet  of  the  Ghost  Dance  had  for  his  predecessor  a  close 
kinsman  reputed  to  be  his  father;  Medicine-crow,  one  of 
the  eminent  Crow  Indians  of  recent  decades,  had  a  paternal 
uncle  (his  step-father)  renowned  for  his  supernatural 
powers.19  Something,  of  course,  must  be  credited  to  the 
direct  influence  of  nurture,  and  wherever  the  specific  details 
coincide  the  resemblance  is  best  explained  from  that  angle. 
Thus,  it  is  hardly  accident  that  both  Medicine-crow  and 
his  “father”  had  a  vision  of  the  crane,  a  bird  otherwise 
far  from  conspicuous  in  that  context.  But  the  general 
tendency  to  communion  with  the  supernatural  is  probably 
to  a  far  greater  extent  transmissible  by  education  in  so  far 
as  there  is  an  hereditary  predisposition;  and  where  such 
intercourse  depends  on  abnormalities,  epilepsy,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  the  hereditary  character  of  the  trait  can  be  inferred 
with  certainty  from  our  knowledge  of  psychiatry. 

It  was  natural  for  older  writers  to  make  the  assumption 
still  current  among  educated  laymen,  that  on  primitive  levels 
no  individuality  can  assert  itself  sufficiently  to  rise  defi¬ 
nitely  above  the  rank  and  file  and  impress  its  own  stamp  upon 
the  whole  community.  We  have  already  seen  numerous  in¬ 
dications  destructive  of  this  hoary  fallacy.  It  remains  to 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


248 

examine  a  few  typical  examples  from  the  psychological  point 
of  view.  Once  more  we  shall  be  driven  to  regard  the 
phenomenon  sociologically  as  well,  for  the  concept  of  leader¬ 
ship  demands  as  its  logical  correlate  that  of  the  group.  What 
is  more,  this  will  involve  to  a  certain  degree  a  retracing  of 
our  steps ;  for  whatever  may  be  the  constituents  that  jointly 
produce  “leadership,”  those  who  are  led  must  illustrate  in 
greater  or  lesser  degree  the  “suggestibility”  of  an  earlier 
section. 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  consider  a  case  that  exemplifies 
leadership  in  its  less  spectacular  forms.  Among  the  Grow  of 
the  Lodge  Grass  district  Medicine-crow  had  at  the  time 
of  my  visits  risen  to  a  position  of  preeminence.  His  igno¬ 
rance  of  English  and  consequent  difficulty  in  directly  dealing 
with  Government  officials  somewhat  diminished  his  influ¬ 
ence  with  the  very  young  “educated”  Indians  but  could  not 
shake  it  among  the  people  at  large,  who  were  duly  impressed 
by  his  war  record,  itself  on  native  theory  the  consequence  of 
supernatural  favor.  I  found  Medicine-crow  a  very  dignified, 
courteous  but  elusive  personality.  He  was  perfectly  willing 
to  give  information  when  not  otherwise  engaged,  and  in 
fact  he  himself  took  the  initiative  in  introducing  me  into 
the  delights  of  a  sweat-lodge,  but  it  was  hard  to  find  him 
unoccupied.  He  had  a  very  distinct  sense  of  responsibility 
as  a  result  of  his  status  in  the  community  and  was  con¬ 
stantly  visiting  back  and  forth.  When  a  newborn  infant  was 
to  be  named,  Medicine-crow  was  naturally  in  demand  as  a 
name-giver;  when  a  delegation  was  to  be  sent  to  Washing¬ 
ton,  it  was  a  foregone  conclusion  that  he  should  be  a  member 
of  the  party;  and  of  course  any  public  assemblage  gave  him 
an  opportunity  to  recite  his  achievements  as  a  warrior. 
Turning  now  to  his  strictly  religious  activities,  he  owned 
a  sacred  pipe  and  an  especially  sacred  rock,  and  was  by  far 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 


249 


the  most  prominent  figure  of  the  district  in  the  greatest  sur¬ 
viving  ceremony,  the  Tobacco  Dance.  He  had  not  only 
founded  a  distinct  chapter  of  the  Tobacco  society  as  a  re¬ 
sult  of  a  vision,  but  had  enough  authority  to  alter  a  symbol 
carried  in  the  procession  of  all  the  chapters, — again,  of 
course,  through  another  specific  revelation.  His  fame  was 
by  no  means  restricted  to  Lodge  Grass :  I  remember  meeting 
him  at  Pryor  as  the  guest  of  a  man  he  had  adopted  into  the 
rite  of  the  Sacred  Pipe,  and  in  the  same  district,  some  eight 
or  nine  years  ago,  a  case  of  serious  illness  led  to  the  idea 
that  Medicine-crow  should  revive  the  Sun  Dance,  which  here 
had  invariably  been  a  ceremony  of  vengeance,  as  a  curative 
ritual. 

From  the  subjective  point  of  view,  there  was  undoubtedly 
about  the  man  an  impressive  high-seriousness.  He  was 
known  for  the  meticulous  care  with  which  every  ritualistic 
detail  was  carried  out  in  conformity  with  tradition,  as  when 
he  slowly  unwrapped  his  sacred  shield  for  me,  smoking  it 
with  incense,  then  four  times  raising  it,  each  time  a  little 
higher,  till  he  had  lifted  it  aloft,  high  above  his  head.  The 
same  occasion  brought  out  another  aspect  of  his  character. 
I  asked  him  whether  he  would  sell  the  shield  for  a  hundred 
dollars.  He  politely  but  firmly  refused.  Without  my  sanc¬ 
tion,  my  interpreter  then  asked  him  whether  he  would  take 
two  hundred  dollars  for  it.  Medicine-crow  replied  that  he 
would  not  accept  a  thousand,  for  he  wanted  to  be  buried  with 
it.  In  order  to  appreciate  this  attitude,  it  is  necessary  to  re¬ 
call  that  before  my  visit  Dr.  Dorsey  and  Mr.  Simms  had 
bought  up  nearly  every  shield  on  the  Reservation  for  the 
Field  Museum  in  Chicago,  and  that  I  myself  had  succeeded 
in  buying  two  of  the  small  remaining  number,  one  of  them 
without  any  difficulty,  the  other  after  some  cajolery. 

Psychologically,  then,  Medicine-crow  was  a  devout  man, 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


250 

loyal  to  the  received  creed.  In  a  subordinate  way,  of  course, 
he  was  able  to  add  to  that  creed  because  his  personality  was 
sufficiently  powerful  to  gain  cultural  acceptance  of  his  indi¬ 
vidual  visions.  At  the  same  time  he  evidently  was  not  the 
type  to  produce  revolutionary  changes:  such  modifications 
as  he  introduced — that  is,  variants  in  ritual  detail  suggested 
in  abnormal  psychic  states — belong,  indeed,  to  the  very  warp 
and  woof  of  Crow  religion.  As  he  must  then  be  reckoned 
a  minor  rather  than  a  major  prophet  with  reference  to  the 
scope  of  his  mission,  so  as  a  social  figure,  too,  he  does  not 
loom  as  a  really  dominant  personality  sweeping  everything 
before  him.  Gray-bull,  for  example,  a  resident  of  the  same 
district,  whom  I  knew  well,  never  gave  me  the  slightest  in¬ 
dication  of  an  inferiority  complex  with  reference  to  Medi¬ 
cine-crow.  It  was  not  that  he  suffered  from  delusions  of 
grandeur:  indeed,  he  was  very  humble  when  he  spoke  of 
Bell-rock,  his  one-time  leader  in  war.  But,  comparing  his 
own  record  and  his  own  reputation  in  the  community  with 
Medicine-crow’s,  Gray-bull  felt  no  such  difference  as  he  was 
conscious  of  when  he  thought  of  this  famous  captain  of  yore. 
Technically  he  might  not  rank  as  a  “chief”  because  he  lacked 
one  particular  deed  of  valor,  but  the  totality  of  his  exploits 
did  not  seem  to  him  appreciably  less  than  Medicine-crow’s, 
and  his  bravery  was  as  little  challenged  among  his  tribesmen. 
He  had  had  visions  of  his  own  and  had  played  his  part  in 
the  ceremonies  of  the  Crow ;  Medicine-crow’s  corresponding 
activities  could  not  make  the  impression  they  did  on  others. 
Naturally  Gray-bull  was  too  intelligent  not  to  know  that 
there  was  a  difference  in  social  status,  that  Medicine-crow 
was  constantly  in  the  limelight  and  was  surrounded  by  a 
group  of  satellites,  but  the  fact  did  not  seem,  in  Gray-bull  s 
mind,  to  have  a  bearing  on  intrinsic  worth. 

When  we  inquire  next  what  made  Medicine-crow  a  re- 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 


251 

ligious  leader  in  contrast  to  Gray-Bull,  we  must  look  to  both 
subjective  and  external  determinants.  Medicine-crow  was 
clearly  by  nature  and  nurture  the  more  religious,  while  Gray- 
bull  represented  what  Dr.  Radin  has  called  the  '‘intermit¬ 
tently  religious”  type.  But  this  initial  difference  alone  would 
have  been  wholly  inadequate  to  raise  Medicine-crow  to  his 
actual  status  as  in  a  measure  a  molder  of  Crow  belief  if  he 
had  not  enjoyed  the  conspicuous  success  characteristic  of  his 
career  as  a  warrior,  which  tribal  thought  invariably  linked 
with  supernatural  sanction.  Without  these  tangible  tokens 
of  divine  favor  the  utmost  possible  religiosity  would  not 
have  availed  him  in  the  least. 

This  cooperation  of  subjective  and  objective  factors  is 
not  less  marked  in  the  more  spectacular  instances  of  primi¬ 
tive  leadership.  Let  us  consider  a  few  representative 
cases. 

The  sudden  contact  of  an  aboriginal  and  a  Caucasian  pop¬ 
ulation  in  South  Africa  produced  results  there  roughly  com¬ 
parable  to  the  Messiah  cults  of  the  North  American  Indians, 
and  a  series  of  remarkable  characters  came  to  the  fore¬ 
ground.  Of  these,  Makanna,  who  led  the  attack  on  a  British 
fort  in  1818,  was  one  of  the  most  interesting.  His  intel¬ 
lectual  abilities  strongly  recall  Finau  II,  but  in  the  case  of 
the  Bantu  they  were  coupled  with  a  definitely  mystical  dis¬ 
position.  When  visiting  the  British  headquarters,  he 

evinced  an  insatiable  curiosity  and  an  acute  intellect  on  such 
subjects  as  fell  under  his  observation.  With  the  military  offi¬ 
cers  he  talked  of  war,  or  of  such  of  the  mechanical  arts  as  fell 
under  his  notice ;  but  his  great  delight  was  to  converse  with  the 
chaplain,  to  elicit  information  in  regard  to  the  doctrines  of 
Christianity ;  and  to  puzzle  him  with  metaphysical  subtleties  or 
mystical  ravings. 


252  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

He  combined  the  native  faith  with  some  notions  derived 
from  the  whites  and  professed  to  be  a  brother  of  Christ. 
Further,  he  taught  a  stricter  morality  and  was  not  afraid  to 
play  the  part  of  a  Savonarola  in  denouncing  the  chiefs,  all 
of  whom  with  one  exception  came  to  bow  to  his  influence. 
Makanna  often  sought  seclusion,  yet  when  he  addressed  a 
crowd  his  eloquence  carried  everything  before  him.  He  an¬ 
nounced  that  he  had  been  sent  by  the  great  spirit  Uhlanga  to 
avenge  the  wrongs  of  the  Xosa,  “that  he  had  power  to  call 
up  from  the  grave  the  spirits  of  their  ancestors  to  assist  them 
in  battle  against  the  English,  whom  they  should  drive  be¬ 
fore  they  stopped  across  the  Zwartkops  river  and  into  the 
ocean.”  When  he  summoned  his  warriors  for  the  assault 
on  Graham’s  Town,  he  declared  that  supernatural  aid  would 
turn  the  hailstorm  of  British  firearms  into  water.  As  a  mat¬ 
ter  of  fact,  he  all  but  succeeded  in  capturing  the  fort,  when 
at  the  critical  moment  the  soldiers  were  relieved  by  a  friendly 
Hottentot  captain.  Makanna  was  obliged  to  surrender  and 
was  imprisoned  by  the  authorities. 

Soon,  however,  another  prophet,  Umlanjeni,  arose,  who 
likewise  counseled  the  chiefs  to  attack  the  foreign  invaders. 
He  was  something  of  an  ascetic,  refused  the  gifts  offered  by 
his  adherents,  and  would  fast  for  hours,  standing  up  to  his 
chin  in  a  pool  of  water.  He  directed  the  people  to  prepare 
by  slaying  their  cattle  and  gorging  themselves  with  meat. 
Despite  the  failure  of  his  project,  he  was  succeeded  in  1856 
by  another  seer  with  a  similar  message.  Umhlakaza  pro¬ 
claimed  a  great  change :  men  and  cattle  were  to  be  resusci¬ 
tated,  while  the  foreigners  were  to  be  swept  from  the  land 
as  though  by  a  whirlwind.  This  result,  however,  could  only 
be  achieved  by  a  summary  destruction  of  the  natives’  cattle, 
goats,  and  corn.  In  consequence  thousands  of  heads  of  cat¬ 
tle  were  slain, — an  extraordinary  tribute  to  the  prophet’s 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 


253 


personality,  considering  the  idolatrous  regard  of  the  South 
Africans  for  their  herds.  A  definite  date  was  set  for  the 
resurrection  of  dead  men  and  beasts,  and  the  failure  of  the 
prophecy  was  interpreted  as  due  to  the  umbrage  taken  by 
the  rising  spirits  at  the  reluctance  of  some  chiefs  to  obey 
Umhlakaza’s  orders.20 

Even  from  the  meager  accounts  available  it  is  clear  that 
some  of  these  Bantu  prophets  were  men  distinguished  for 
character,  intensity  of  faith,  and  intellectual  powers.  But 
it  is  equally  certain  that  the  effectiveness  of  their  propaganda 
was  co-determined  by  the  highly  special  circumstances  of 
the  South  African  aborigines  at  the  time. 

Reverting  once  more  to  the  Ghost  Dance,  we  find  a  whole 
group  of  interesting  personalities  and  we  are  also  able  to 
glean  some  faint  ideas  as  to  the  manner  in  which  they  im¬ 
pressed  their  contemporaries.  Wovoka  is  commonly  de¬ 
scribed  as  the  source  and  center  of  the  cult,  but  I  am  strongly 
of  the  opinion  that  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  historical 
cases,  circumstances  lent  a  purely  accidental  halo  to  an  es¬ 
sentially  commonplace  figure.  Doubtless  Wovoka  differed 
sufficiently  from  other  Paviotso  to  have  normally  qualified 
for  the  position  of  a  tribal  shaman,  but  there  is  no  evidence 
that  he  manifested  any  unusual  ability  or  any  strikingly 
novel  conceptions  even  in  a  strictly  religious  sense.  His  no¬ 
tions  were  borrowed  in  part  from  his  kinsman  and  fore¬ 
runner  Tavibo,  while  in  part  they  were  derived  through  con¬ 
tact  with  the  Wilson  family.  In  strength  of  character,  in 
audacity  of  imagination,  he  does  not  even  remotely  approach 
some  of  the  Plains  Indian  leaders  who  were  content  to  act 
as  his  apostles  and  to  treasure  as  sacred  every  object  that 
came  from  his  country.  What  made  Wovoka  an  intertribal, 
nay,  national,  character,  was  not  his  native  capacity  for  guid¬ 
ing  the  destinies  of  his  race  but  the  purely  accidental  plight 


254 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


in  which  the  vigorous  and  pugnacious  Plains  Indians — par¬ 
ticularly  the  Western  Dakota — found  themselves  when  he 
first  attracted  their  notice.  His  example  is  all  the  more  in¬ 
structive  as  a  contribution  to  the  growth  of  religious  thought. 

It  is  extremely  suggestive  to  trace  the  individual  reactions 
of  different  Indians  to  this  professed  leader  of  their  race. 
Porcupine,  a  Cheyenne,  who  visited  Wovoka  in  November, 
1889,  forthwith  identified  him  with  Christ,  nay,  even  saw 
the  scars  left  on  his  hands  by  the  crucifixion.  He  also  re¬ 
ported  that  Wovoka  had  addressed  all  the  delegates  in  their 
respective  tongues.  Yet  it  is  an  established  fact  that  Wovoka 
spoke  nothing  but  his  native  Paviotso  and  a  little  English. 
On  his  return  Porcupine  repeatedly  saw  Wovoka  in  his  sleep : 
now  the  Prophet  warned  him  of  troubles  to  be  expected  with 
the  soldiers,  then  again  he  reassured  the  dreamer,  telling  him 
that  all  would  be  well.  Yet  where  Porcupine  found  omnis¬ 
cience  and  the  marks  of  crucifixion  a  Kiowa  pilgrim  experi¬ 
enced  nothing  but  disillusionment :  he  was  forced  to  use  an 
interpreter  to  the  man  who  supposedly  knew  everything,  and 
he  could  find  no  evidence  of  scars  on  Wovoka* s  hands.  He 
returned,  denouncing  the  “Messiah”  as  an  impostor.  That 
the  different  versions  brought  back  by  different  delegates 
were  in  part  due  to  Wovoka’s  own  vacillation,  is  almost  cer¬ 
tain.  As  Mr.  Mooney  writes, 

there  can  be  little  doubt  that  Wovoka  made  claims  and  proph¬ 
ecies,  supported  by  hypnotic  performances,  from  which  he  after¬ 
ward  receded  when  he  found  that  the  excitement  had  gone  be¬ 
yond  his  control  and  resulted  in  an  Indian  outbreak. 

Nevertheless,  the  discrepancies  are  largely  accounted  for  by 
the  disparity  in  initial  attitude,  in  other  words,  by  individual 
variation. 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 


255 


From  this  point  of  view  the  report  of  the  Western  Dakota 
delegates  merits  attention.  When  they  arrived  at  Wovoka’s 
camp,  smoke  descended  from  heaven  and  when  it  had  van¬ 
ished  the  Prophet  became  visible.  He  ordered  the  Dakota 
pilgrims  to  kill  a  buffalo  on  their  way  home,  to  cut  off  the 
head,  tail  and  four  feet,  and  to  leave  them ;  he  declared  that 
the  buffalo  would  come  to  life  again.  He  also  told  them  to 
call  upon  him  if  they  were  fatigued  when  traveling  home, 
and  he  would  shorten  their  trip.  In  evident  good  faith  the 
delegates  reported  that  the  words  of  Wovoka  had  been  ful¬ 
filled  on  their  journey:  they  had  killed  a  buffalo  and  it  was 
restored  to  life;  they  had  prayed  to  Wovoka  when  tired  of 
a  night  “and  in  the  morning  we  found  ourselves  at  a  great 
distance  from  where  we  stopped.”  Suggestion  surely  could 
not  go  much  further. 

Sometimes  members  of  the  same  delegation  were  affected 
quite  differently  by  the  Prophet’s  practices.  On  one  occa¬ 
sion  he  had  a  mixed  group  of  Arapaho  and  Cheyenne  seated 
on  the  ground  facing  him  as  he  was  holding  a  hat  and  some 
eagle  feathers  in  his  hand. 

Then  with  a  quick  movement  he  had  put  his  hand  into  the 
empty  hat  and  drawn  out  from  it  “something  black.” 

One  of  the  Cheyenne  present,  Tall-bull,  was  not  much  im¬ 
pressed,  merely  accepting  the  performance  as  one  comparable 
with  the  legerdemain  of  the  shamans  of  his  own  people. 
But  Black-coyote  looked  into  the  hat  and  there  “saw  the 
whole  world,” — a  phrase,  incidentally,  characteristic  of  cer¬ 
tain  Plains  Indian  visions  and  reminiscent  of  the  cosmic  vi¬ 
sions  of  the  Ojibwa.  This  difference  in  reaction  is  satisfac¬ 
torily  explained  by  Mr.  Mooney.  Tall-bull  was  a  light¬ 
hearted,  skeptical  person  untinged  with  “other-worldliness.” 


256  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

Black-coyote  was  a  mystic  and  aspirant  to  shamanistic  hon¬ 
ors,  a  man  who  had  cut  off  seventy  pieces  of  his  flesh  as  an 
offering  to  the  Sun  because  it  had  been  prescribed  in  a  vision. 
He  was  predisposed  to  see  marvelous  things,  and  in  conse¬ 
quence  he  saw  them.  No  wonder  he  became  one  of  the  chief 
apostles  of  the  new  cult  among  the  Arapaho. 

However,  he  was  eclipsed  by  a  fellow-tribesman,  Sitting- 
bull,  who  at  the  early  age  of  about  thirty-six  developed  into 
the  principal  propagandist  of  the  Ghost  Dance  in  the  south¬ 
ern  Plains  area,  teaching  the  faith  to  the  Caddo,  Wichita, 
and  Kiowa  by  means  of  the  elaborate  gesture  language  of 
the  area.  Sitting-bull  made  a  deep  impression  on  General 
(then  Lieutenant)  Hugh  L.  Scott,  who,  prepared  to  meet  a 
charlatan,  found  a  sincere,  unpretentious,  and  disinterested 
believer,  who  was  inculcating  in  his  people  “precepts  which 
if  faithfully  carried  out  will  bring  them  into  better  accord 
with  their  white  neighbors,  and  has  prepared  the  way  for 
their  final  Christianization. ”  His  influence  on  his  followers 
was  remarkable :  “All  sorts  of  people  wanted  to  touch  him, 
men  and  women  would  come  in,  rub  their  hands  on  him, 
and  cry.” 

Not  less  interesting  than  these  Arapaho  leaders  is  the 
figure  of  the  Kiowa  seer  dubbed  “The  Messenger.”  Long 
before  the  rise  of  the  Ghost  Dance  he  had  been  conspicuous 
for  his  revelations.  He  would  frequently  go  up  into  the 
mountains  to  fast,  especially  to  secure  aid  in  doctoring  the 
sick  and  to  convey  messages  from  the  departed  to  their  sur¬ 
viving  kin.  According  to  Mr.  Mooney,  he  was  a  man  of 
great  intellectual  endowments:  he  devised  a  wholly  novel 
system  of  ideographic  writing  based  on  the  gesture  language, 
and  by  means  of  his  invention  was  able  to  correspond  with 
his  sons.21 

Compared  with  Sitting-bull  and  the  Messenger,  Wovoka 


INDIVIDUAL  VARIABILITY 


^57 


cuts  a  rather  sorry  figure;  he  had  neither  the  humility  and 
altruism  of  the  one,  nor  the  intellectual  capacities  of  the 
other.  How,  then,  did  this  mediocre,  weak-spined  member 
of  one  of  the  rudest  Western  tribes  succeed  in  enlisting  as 
disciples  men  coming  from  richer  aboriginal  cultures  and 
unequivocally  superior  to  him  in  every  respect  as  personali¬ 
ties  ?  The  answer  is  not  difficult  if  we  admit  that  psychology, 
like  history,  is  not  logical.  Why  did  a  highly  intelligent  and 
open-minded  man  like  John  Morley  follow  a  pompous  and 
dogmatic  leader  like  Gladstone?  Endowed  with  an  ex¬ 
tremely  moderate  equipment  beyond  that  of  the  ordinary 
Paviotso,  Wovoka  was  placed  in  a  position  where  he  could 
absorb  some  of  the  ideas  of  Christianity  and  unite  them  with 
those  of  his  predecessor  and  kinsman  Tavibo.  It  is  almost 
certain  that  he  did  not  start  with  an  exalted  conception  of 
his  mission,  that  had  his  teachings  never  reached  the  Plains 
Indians  he  would  never  have  risen  to  more  than  local  fame. 
It  was  the  character  of  Plains  Indian  culture  and  the  char¬ 
acter  of  some  of  its  individual  bearers  that  transformed 
Wovoka  into  a  national  figure.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem, 
the  most  spectacular  of  recent  Indian  religious  movements 
had  its  origin  in  the  least  interesting  and  powerful  of  its 
personalities. 


References 

1  R.  F.  Benedict :  67  f . 

2  Radin,  1923  :  290  sq.  Jones :  11,  295  f.,  307,  31 1.  Skinner, 
1913:  42  sq. 

3  Woodworth:  368  sq. 

4  Brown:  167. 

5  Lowie,  1922:  325,  330;  id.,  1919:  117,  129. 

6  Bleek  and  Lloyd;  331  sq. 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


258 

7  Woodworth :  548. 

8  Radin,  1920:  390,  397,  402,  410  f.,  440,  461. 

9  Mariner:  113,  139,  235,  298,  332,  338,  353,  388. 

10  Mariner :  295  ;  chap.  XIV. 

11  Junod:  11,  280. 

12  Junod :  11,  414. 

13  Brown :  167,  177. 

14  Bogoras  :  415,  426  sq.,  441. 

15  Junod:  11,  435-460. 

16  Lowie,  1912 :  226 ;  id.,  1915  :  31.  J.  O.  Dorsey :  387  f0 

17  Bogoras  :  450  sq. 

18  Gomes:  179.  H.  L.  Roth:  11,  270. 

19  Lowie,  1919:  164;  id.,  1922:  389,  422. 

20  Shooter:  195-212;  Wallis:  255-263. 

21  Mooney:  797,  821,  896  f.,  909  sq.,  918. 


CHAPTER  XII 


RELIGION  AND  ART 

The  relationship  of  religion  and  art  has  often  been  dis¬ 
cussed  and  indeed  could  hardly  fail  to  attract  notice.  They 
are  closely  intertwined  in  many  cultures,  and  in  that  ancient 
civilization  which  has  exerted  the  most  profound  influence 
on  our  own  the  connection  was  a  peculiarly  intimate  one. 
Psychologically,  both  involve  above  all  an  appeal  to  the 
emotional  side  of  man,  though  of  course  not  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  intellectual  element.  Small  wonder,  then,  that  we 
find  the  morbidly  devout  genius  of  Kierkegaard  pathetically 
bent  on  marking  off  the  field  of  religion  from  that  of  esthet¬ 
ics;  small  wonder,  too,  that  they  have  sometimes  been 
brought  into  a  simple  genetic  sequence.  Miss  Jane  Harri¬ 
son,  for  example,  has  written  a  suggestive  book,  in  which 
she  attempts  to  show,  through  parallels  with  simpler  peoples, 
how  Greek  drama  sprang  from  ritualistic  dances  and  that 
Greek  sculpture  was  merely  “a  rite  frozen  to  a  monument.” 
She  suggests  that  while  ritual  does  not  uniformly  develop 
into  art  “in  all  probability  dramatic  art  has  always  to  go 
through  the  stage  of  ritual.”  1 

Without  entering  into  a  detailed  examination  of  this 
thesis,  we  may  observe  that  its  very  simplicity  should  mili¬ 
tate  against  its  acceptance,  for  the  phenomena  of  culture  do 
not  so  readily  lend  themselves  to  a  short-hand  description  of 
their  sequences.  A  priori  it  is  better  to  assume  with  Wundt 
that  primitive  man  no  less  than  ourselves  is  actuated  by  a 
variety  of  motives  and  that  among  this  number  those  of 

259 


26o 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


genuinely  esthetic  character,  i.  e.,  those  quite  divorced  from 
ulterior  or  correlated  ends,  must  have  exerted  their  influence 
even  at  a  very  early  period.  If,  he  contends,  dancing  has 
developed  into  a  source  of  recreation  and  enjoyment,  the 
reason  lies  in  the  sensations  and  affective  accompaniments 
of  the  dance,  irrespective  of  any  other  associated  purposes. 
Indeed,  we  shall  go  further  than  Wundt,  or  rather  shall  ad¬ 
here  more  consistently  to  the  view  here  propounded  by  him. 
For,  notwithstanding  the  passage  just  paraphrased,  this 
writer  tends  to  obliterate  its  effect  by  constantly  harping  on 
the  concomitance  of  religio-magical  factors;  thus,  contrary 
to  some  of  our  descriptive  statements,  he  shrinks  from  in¬ 
terpreting  the  Australian  corroborees  as  forms  of  social  en¬ 
tertainment  pure  and  simple.2  Frankly  casting  aside  such 
timidity,  I  will  postulate  the  esthetic  impulse  as  one  of  the 
irreducible  components  of  the  human  mind,  as  a  potent 
agency  from  the  very  beginnings  of  human  existence.  In 
other  words,  I  hold  with  Jochelson  that  “the  esthetic  taste  is 
as  strong  and  spontaneous  a  longing  of  primitive  man  as  are 
belie  fs.”  Accordingly,  its  interaction  with  other  such  ele¬ 
ments  rather  than  its  derivation  from  qualitatively  distinct 
phenomena  will  form  the  subject  of  this  chapter;  nay,  I  shall 
not  be  afraid  to  suggest  that  sometimes  the  ostensibly  re¬ 
ligious  is  rather  to  be  traced  to  an  esthetic  source  than  vice 
versa. 


Influence  of  Religion  on  Art 

It  is  obvious  that  religion  provides  art  with  subjects  for 
pictorial,  plastic,  and  literary  representation.  This  appears 
very  clearly  in  typical  Plains  Indian  decorations  of  tent- 
covers,  robes,  or  shields.  For  example,  when  we  survey  the 
Southern  Siouan  designs  published  by  J.  O.  Dorsey,  we  find 


RELIGION  AND  ART 


261 

that  they  are,  in  aboriginal  theory,  replicas  of  things  re¬ 
vealed  in  visionary  experiences. 

Should  a  man  wear  such  a  decorated  robe  without  having  had 
a  vision  of  the  mystery  object,  he  was  in  danger  (if  the  object 
was  connected  with  the  Thunder-being,  etc.)  of  being  killed  by 
lightning.  Every  Omaha  feared  to  decorate  his  robe,  tent,  or 
blanket  with  an  object  seen  by  another  person  in  a  dream  or 
vision.  For  instance,  George  Miller  would  not  dare  to  have 
bears’  claws,  horses’  hoofs,  etc.,  on  his  robe,  because  neither  he 
nor  his  father  ever  saw  a  bear  or  horse  mysteriously. 

The  prerogative  was  transmitted  to  the  next  descending  gen¬ 
eration,  but  unless  the  son  repeated  his  father’s  mystic  ex¬ 
perience  he  might  not  in  turn  bequeath  it  to  his  issue.3 

Whenever  the  relation  of  religion  to  art  is  discussed,  it  is 
necessary  to  inquire  first  into  the  technical  equipment,  the 
stock  of  artistic  ideas,  characteristic  of  the  people  in  question. 
In  their  secular  paintings  on,  say,  wind-screens  or  robes  the 
Plains  Indians  are  capable  of  vivid  representations  of  mili¬ 
tary  exploits :  here  the  owner  is  depicted  driving  off  a  herd 
of  the  enemy’s  horses,  there  he  is  holding  his  own  against  a 
hostile  group  and  striking  one  foeman  with  a  feathered 
spear.  Let  us  recall  that  such  scenes  are  indeed  taken  from 
actual  life  but  are  theoretically  often  mere  fulfillments  of 
the  visions  that  lent  sanction  to  the  war  expeditions  de¬ 
lineated.  It  is  accordingly  not  a  little  noteworthy  that  in  the 
avowedly  sacred  paintings  no  such  composition  occurs.  An 
Omaha  has  a  vision  of  deer  and  he  paints  one  of  these  ani¬ 
mals  on  either  side  of  his  lodge  door;  he  sees  two  stars  and 
the  new  moon,  and  a  crescent  flanked  by  two  four-pointed 
figures  appears  on  his  robe;  and  when  he  has  a  vision  of 
horses  he  represents  on  his  tent  cover  horsetracks  and  horse 
tails.  It  is  not  that  human  figures  are  lacking,— a  red  circle 


262  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

symbolizing  the  sun  may  harbor  a  man  shaking  a  dewclaw 
rattle ,  it  is  not  that  all  sacred  decorations  are  equally  simple, 

on  one  Omaha  lodge  a  row  of  bear-paw  prints  is  topped 
by  a  quartette  of  differently  colored  lightning  lines,  above 
which  a  circle  stands  for  the  bear’s  cave.  However/ adven¬ 
tures  that  are  quite  within  the  native  craftsman’s  capacity  are 
not  reproduced  but  merely  suggested  in  the  religious  art  of 
these  tribes.  The  ideas  may  be  identical,  but  their  expression 
differs :  on  a  Crow  robe  devoid  of  religious  value  the  enemy 
is  shown  shooting  at  the  hero,  but  is  struck  by  him ;  on  a 
sacred  shield  from  the  same  tribe  the  glancing  off  of  bullets 
is  symbolised  by  a  series  of  lines. 

It  would  certainly  be  rash  to  deny  that  the  Plains  Indians 
ever  applied  principles  of  composition  current  among  them 
to  the  religious  domain,  yet  the  fact  that  in  several  dozen 
samples  examined  at  random  not  one  exemplifies  the  assimi¬ 
lation  of  the  realistic  style  cannot  be  without  significance. 
In  his  treatise  on  the  Ghost  Dance  Mr.  Mooney,  it  is  true, 
reproduces  two  specimens  that  apparently  contradict  my  ob¬ 
servations,4  but  a  closer  scrutiny  disposes  of  the  difficulty. 
One  of  them  purports  to  depict  a  Kiowa  seer’s  experience 
and  really  goes  much  further  in  the  direction  of  pictorial 
composition  than  the  Omaha  illustrations  described  above. 
Yet  the  entire  upper  third  of  the  picture  consists  in  a  mass 
of  strokes  wholly  unintelligible  without  a  special  interpre¬ 
tation,  which  connects  them  with  the  prairie  and  buffalo. 
The  remainder  is,  indeed,  almost  self-explanatory,  yet  there 
is  a  total  want  of  that  spirited  realism  distinctive  of  the  bet¬ 
ter  Plains  Indian  paintings.  Now  this  charge  cannot  be 
leveled  against  the  second  painting,  which  delineates  faith¬ 
fully  and  graphically  a  group  of  Cheyenne  and  Arapaho 
Ghost  Dancers.  But  here  another  point  enters.  In  what 
sense  are  we  dealing  with  a  genuinely  religious  picture  ? 


RELIGION  AND  ART 


263 

There  is  of  course  the  representation  of  a  religious  scene, 
but  interestingly  enough  it  is  not  the  work  of  a  votary  of 
the  tribes  in  question,  but  that  of  a  Ute  captive.  There  is 
not  the  slightest  suggestion  that  the  painting  had  any  re¬ 
ligious  value  for  its  maker,  who  may  well  be  supposed  to 
have  merely  exercised  an  observant  foreigner’s  curiosity  and 
to  have  given  rein  to  a  purely  artistic  impulse. 

Perhaps  we  can  safely  go  a  step  further  and  offer  a 
plausible  suggestion  for  the  difference  between  the  secular 
and  the  religious  art  of  these  people.  The  overpowering 
sense  of  communion  with  the  supernatural  may  evoke  a  de¬ 
sire  for  outward  representation  without  requiring  more  than 
a  suggestive  memento  of  the  wonderful  experience.  In 
other  words,  it  is  not  necessary  to  draw  the  supernatural 
patron  in  the  act  of  addressing  his  suppliant  and  conferring 
upon  him  some  longed-for  boon.  Just  as  a  chicken-hawk 
feather  becomes  sacred  not  because  it  is  identical  with  the 
•  object  of  the  vision,  let  alone  with  the  giver  of  the  blessing, 
but  because  of  its  association  with  the  ultimate  fount  of 
the  religious  emotion  felt,  so  the  merest  outline  commemo¬ 
rating  the  great  event  acquires  a  derivative  holiness  as  a 
symbol  that  may  or  may  not  merge  in  the  total  memory 

image  of  the  mystic  exaltation. 

A  parallel  difference  in  secular  and  sacred  art  style  has 
been  noted  by  Mr.  Jochelson.5  As  producers  of  miniature 
carvings  in  wood,  ivory,  or  whalebone,  the  Koryak  of  east¬ 
ern  Siberia  stand  perhaps  supreme  among  the  unlettered 
peoples  of  the  globe.  Even  complicated  tasks,  such  as  the 
representation  of  a  pair  of  wrestlers  or  of  a  sledge  with 
driver  and  dogs,  are  successfully  executed  by  the  native  sculp¬ 
tor.  One  striking  illustration  furnished  by  the  Russian 
investigator  veritably  has  some  connection  with  the  reli¬ 
gious  sphere :  the  artist  exhibits  a  shaman  beating  the  drum 


264  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

emblematic  of  his  office  and  even  reproduces  the  gleam  of 
ecstasy  on  his  subject’s  face.  But,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Ute  painting  of  an  alien  ceremony,  the  work  of  art  is  a 
work  of  art  devoid  of  sacred  meaning.  If,  now,  we  turn  to 
objects  of  definitely  religious  value  among  the  Koryak,  we 
receive  a  rude  shock  i  the  makers  of  these  charms  and  idols 
and  holy  fire-making  apparatus  seem  to  belong  to  a  realm 
of  artistic  endeavor  utterly  and  hopelessly  inferior  to  that 
of  their  fellow-tribesmen  when  intent  on  solving  a  purely 
esthetic  problem.  For  example,  the  wooden  bear  carved 
for  the  occasion  of  the  Bear  festival  is  of  a  crudity  that 
simply  beggars  description  when  placed  side  by  side  with 
what  is  done  for  the  sheer  love  of  carving. 

Mr.  Jochelson  is  inclined  to  explain  the  disparity  by  the 
vagueness  of  primitive  man’s  conception  of  his  supernatural 
anthropomorphic  beings,  but  I  am  not  convinced  that  the 
whole  or  even  the  main  solution  is  to  be  sought  in  this  direc¬ 
tion.  For  one  thing,  some  of  these  beings  are  made  suffici¬ 
ently  definite  in  tribal  mythologies;  again,  the  manufacturer 
of  sacred  carvings,  as  indicated  by  the  case  of  the  bear,  may 
fail  no  less  as  an  artist  when  he  attempts  the  well-known 
animal  form,  even  among  so  skillful  a  people  as  the  Koryak. 
It  seems  simpler  and  more  plausible  to  assume  that  the  na¬ 
tive,  in  certain  moods,  ignores  the  ideals  of  art  for  the  plain 
reason  that  his  attention' is  riveted  to  other  ends.  Take,  for 
example,  the  birch-bark  records  associated  with  the  Mystic 
Rite  of  the  Ojibwa  about  Lake  Superior.  The  drawings, 
incised  upon  bark  with  a  pointed  piece  of  bone,  are  often 
exceedingly  crude,  but  it  is  hardly  because  of  the  vague  con¬ 
ceptions  of  the  supernatural  beings,  since  the  like  deficiency 
is  noticeable  in  the  pictures  of  such  familiar  creatures  as  the 
wolf  or  bear.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  when  .we  compare  the 
several  records  published,  it  becomes  clear  that  each  artist 


RELIGION  AND  ART 


265 

has  consistently  attacked  as  a  whole  the  problem  confront¬ 
ing  him;  he  does  not  discriminate  between  supernatural 
beings  and  phenomena  of  every-day  existence:  everything 
seems,  as  it  were,  cast  in  a  single  mold.  Thus,  the  Red 
Lake  chart  reproduced  by  Hoffman  is  throughout  charac¬ 
terized  by  a  neatness  that,  despite  its  schematism,  sets  it  off 
favorably  from  the  uniform  slovenliness  of  the  Mille  Lacs 
record,  while  a  third  specimen  displays  a  distinct  effort 
towards  not  merely  symbolic  but  pictorial  delineation  and 
succeeds  in  conveying  a  sense  of  movement  no  less  in  the 
drawing  of  the  drumming  Great  Spirit  than  in  that  of  a 
similarly  occupied  priest.  If  even  in  the  last-mentioned 
sample  the  execution  falls  manifestly  below  the  draftsman’s 
technical  capacity,  it  is  presumably  because  the  primary  pur¬ 
pose  of  the  charts  is  mnemonic,  so  that  artistic  finish  would 
be  a  work  of  supererogation,  perhaps  the  veriest  preciosity. 
It  is  none  the  less  interesting  to  observe  how,  presumably 
without  set  purpose,  native  talent  or  the  esthetic  conscience 
may  assert  itself  in  individual  instances.6 

In  connection  with  these  charts  and  similar  phenomena 
of  other  regions  their  esoteric  character  should  not  be  over¬ 
looked;  they  are  not  exposed  to  the  public  gaze,  and  “there 
does  not  appear  to  be  a  recognized  system  by  which  the 
work  of  any  one  person  is  fully  intelligible  to  another.”  It 
may  well  be  that  the  lack  of  definition  in  the  products  of 
religious  art  is  often  co-determined  by  deliberate  shrouding 
in  mystery.  In  some  instances,  other  motives  may  operate 
in  the  same  direction :  as  Professor  Boas  once  suggested, 
“the  very  sacredness  of  the  idea  represented  might  induce 
the  artist  to  obscure  his  meaning  intentionally,  in  order  to 
kfcep  the  significance  of  the  design  from  profane  eyes.”  7 

Have  we,  then,  hit  upon  one  of  those  general  laws  which 
modern  ethnology,  to  the  disgust  of  outsiders,  is  so  reluc- 


266 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


tant  to  proclaim  ?  Does  religion  by  some  inherent  necessity 
exert  a  deleterious  influence  on  art  or,  at  least,  on  realism? 
A  glance  at  the  history  of  Egypt  demonstrates  the  shallow¬ 
ness  of  such  a  formulation.  It  is  true  that,  in  the  words  of 
the  late  Professor  W.  Max  Muller,  “adherence  to  tradition 
constituted  an  especially  grave  barrier  to  artistic  develop¬ 
ment,”  that  “the  figures  of  the  gods  always  preserved,  more 
or  less,  the  stiff  and— in  some  details — childishly  imperfect 
style  of  the  early  period.”  But  on  the  other  side  may  be 
cited  “the  marvelous  portrait  sculpture  of  the  Pyramid  Age,” 
intimately  correlated  with  religious  conceptions  and  plaus¬ 
ibly  adduced  by  Wundt  to  demonstrate  the  effectiveness,  nay, 
possibly  omnipotence,  of  religious  factors  in  leading  to  a 
higher  stage  of  individualistic  representation.8  Religion 
and  art  are  both  too  intricate  to  admit  of  an  “either-or”  type 
of  interaction:  even  in  the  same  society  and  at  the  same 
time  contradictory  currents  may  well  be  seen  according  to 
the  phase  of  the  phenomena  envisaged. 

To  return  to  lowlier  planes  of  culture,  there  is  an  addi¬ 
tional  way  of  accounting  for  the  slovenliness  of  pictorial 
or  plastic  art  when  associated  with  the  sacred.  Besides 
these  arts  there  are  other  means  of  esthetic  expression, — 
those  corresponding  to  our  drama.  The  Menomini,  who  had 
been  blessed  by  supernatural  buffalo,  would  assemble  twice 
a  year,  and  execute  a  dance  with  a  buffalo  headdress,  “imi¬ 
tating  the  pawing,  bellowing,  and  hooking,  of  the  buffalo.”  9 
Such  dramatic  performances  will  engage  our  attention  a 
little  later.  In  the  present  context  the  point  to  note  is  that 
they  are  a  potentially  stronger  means  of  emotional  attach¬ 
ment  to  the  Sacred  than  the  feather  or  painted  figure  sym¬ 
bolic  of  a  vision,  for  while  the  latter,  when  once  put  on  or 
executed,  respectively,  may  leave  the  owner  in  a  quite  pas¬ 
sive  state  the  animal  dance  involves  an  active  identification 


RELIGION  AND  ART  267 

with  the  object  of  religious  veneration.  But  to  what  extent 
such  a  means  for  the  expression  of  the  religious  idea  may 
have  been  previously  established  and  may  serve  adequately 
to  fulfill  the  esthetic  urge  is  a  question  that  can  only  be 
answered  by  viewing  all  the  phases  of  a  tribal  culture  in  uni¬ 
son;  and  apart  from  such  synthetic  surveys  any  generaliza¬ 
tion  is  almost  sure  to  miss  the  mark. 


Retroactive  Influence  of  Art 

If  art  derives  much  of  its  subject-matter  from  religion 
and  may  even  in  some  instances  draw  technical  advantages 
from  the  association,  it  is  not  the  less  true  that  religion  in 
turn  may  draw  sustenance  from  art.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to 
determine  the  general  character  of  this  retroactive  influence. 
Let  any  one  attempt  to  draw,  let  alone  model  a  house,  from 
no  matter  how  good  a  verbal  description  :  there  will  be  in¬ 
numerable  details  that  must  be  defined  yet  remain  inde¬ 
terminate  in  the  directions.  All  the  more  will  this  apply  to 
the  case  of  human  physiognomy.  Hence  an  artist  who 
should  wish  to  depict  with  precision  the  popular  conception 
of  a  given  supernatural  being  is  bound  to  rely  upon  his 
individual  fancy  to  fill  in  the  lacking  details.  That  there 
is  no  necessity  for  his  conceiving  his  task  from  this  angle  at 
all,  that  he  may  be  content  with  mere  sketchiness  or  sym¬ 
bolism,  has  already  been  demonstrated.  But  as  soon  as  an 
esthetic  impulse  goads  him  into  different  paths,  he  may 
come  to  create  a  type  that  at  once  synthesizes  the  essentials 
of  current  belief,  without  contravening  them  in  any  par¬ 
ticular,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  adds  a  series  of  strokes 
that  may  not  merely  shade  but  materially  alter  the  pre¬ 
existing  picture.  So  long  as  things  go  no  further,  the  new 
image  is  no  more  than  an  individual  version  of  the  general 


268 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


norm.  But  as  soon  as  that  variant,  whether  through  its 
maker’s  prestige  or  through  priestly  patronage,  is  elevated 
to  the  position  of  a  standard  representation,  it  becomes  it¬ 
self  thenceforward  a  determinant  of  the  popular  conception. 

To  take  a  simple  example,  there  is  a  widespread  belief 
in  North  America  that  thunder  is  caused  by  a  large  bird. 
So  long  as  this  notion  is  merely  transmitted  by  oral  tradi¬ 
tion  it  may  remain  quite  vague.  But  when  a  native  at¬ 
tempts  to  incise  his  conception  on  birch-bark  or  to  carve 
it  in  a  wooden  mask,  he  will  naturally  add  distinctive  fea¬ 
tures  that  make  of  the  Thunderbird  an  eagle,  or  a  hawk,  or  a 
nondescript  product  of  fancy.  Now  such  identification  may 
have  far-reaching  consequences,  for  it  would  naturally  tend 
to  raise,  say,  the  eagle  to  a  level  of  sanctity  that  did  not 
originally  belong  to  it  and  cannot  well  belong  to  it  where, 
as  among  the  Nootka  of  Vancouver  Island,  the  Thunder- 
bird  does  not  correspond  to  any  actual  species.  Moreover, 
if  two  or  more  distinct  representations  are  both  accepted, 
a  dual  or  multiple  conception  of  the  being  is  fostered,  as 
when  the  Menomini  now  picture  the  Thunderers  in  human 
form,  now  again  as  birds,  and  arrive  at  the  notion  that  the 
eagles  are  related  to  the  Thunderers.10 

The  reaction  of  pictorial  representation  on  mythology 
is  strikingly  exemplified  by  the  story  of  the  Egyptian  deity 
Qeb  (Geb).  Artists  depicting  him  in  erect  posture  showed 
a  goose  perched  on  his  head,  and  later  theologians  accord¬ 
ingly  construed  this  earth-god  into  a  huge  gander,  who,  with 
divine  indifference  to  sexual  disabilities,  laid  the  solar  egg. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  goose  was  primarily  nothing  but  the 
hieroglyph  forming  an  abbreviation  of  Qeb’s  name.11 

Fetichism  furnishes  one  of  the  most  instructive  examples 
of  the  interrelationship  under  discussion.  At  least  in  one 
of  the  regions  regarded  as  preeminently  characterized  by 


RELIGION  AND  ART  269 

fetichism — in  the  Congo,  including  Loango — the  connection 
differs  fundamentally  from  what  might  be  expected.  That 
is  to  say,  a  fetich  is  not  the  execution  of  the  craftsman’s 
conception  of  some  divine  being;  but  among  the  legion  of 
human  effigies  produced  in  this  region  of  carvers  some  speci¬ 
mens  are  selected  for  sanctification:  the  representation  of 
a  human  figure  “is  not  an  effective  fetich  until  it  has  been 
through  the  hands  of  the  medicine-man  and  received  its 
power  from  him.”  What  confers  upon  the  object  its  super¬ 
natural  potency  is  solely  the  mysterious  spell  sung  over  it 
or  the  substance,  wonder-working  in  its  own  right  like  the 
ngula  paint,  thrust  into  a  ventral  cavity.  Hence,  only  a 
moderate  percentage  of  the  human  or  animal  figurines  are 
in  reality  fetiches.  On  the  other  hand,  the  sanctifying  tech¬ 
nique  can  manifestly  be  applied  to  quite  different  objects,-— 
to  artifacts  not  suggesting  the  human  form  or  to  inanimate 
phenomena  of  the  surrounding  world,  a  stone,  a  tree,  a  cross¬ 
road.  Any  object  can  become  a  “fetich”  if  only  it  has  been 
ritualistically  consecrated. 

By  dint  of  the  wizard’s  incantations  an  inert  mass  comes 
to  acquire  an  altogether  remarkable  but  specialized  potency : 
it  may  ward  off  a  fever  or  grant  invulnerability,  render  its 
owner  invisible  or  banish  a  plague  of  grasshoppers. 

Now  it  is  a  matter  of  considerable  interest  to  find  a 
close  correlation  between  the  development  of  wood-carving 
and  the  occurrence  of  anthropomorphic  and  theromorphic 
figures.  If  for  convenience’  sake  we  restrict  the  term  “fet¬ 
ich”  to  such  effigies  as  these  and  call  other  objects  of  gener- 
ically  similar  sacred  character  “amulets,”  we  find  that  amu¬ 
lets  predominate  markedly  in  the  Uele  and  Ubangi  districts, 
while  the  Lower  Congo,  the  Kasai  and  Kwango  districts 
display  an  incomparably  greater  abundance  of  fetiches. 
Thus,  the  Tervueren  Museum  near  Brussels  has  73  fetiches 


270 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


from  the  Maritime  Region  but  not  a  solitary  amulet;  while 
from  the  Uele  there  are  27  amulets  and  no  fetiches,  from  the 
Ubangi  16  amulets  and  a  single  fetich.  The  distribution 
of  the  two  is  clearly  one  of  mutual  exclusiveness;  and  it 
coincides  definitely  with  the  efflorescence  and  the  decay  of 
woodwork  in  the  Congo.  In  other  words,  the  prevalence  of 
an  artistic  technique  determines  the  outward  form  of  re¬ 
ligious  objects. 

But  we  can  perhaps  safely  go  a  step  further.  It  is  all 
very  well  for  our  anonymous  authority  to  say  that  amulet 
and  fetich  “sont  deux  expressions  mater ielles  d’un  senti¬ 
ment  uniforme.”  Generically,  no  doubt  they  are;  and  per¬ 
haps  they  may  be  even  more  specifically  in  special  cases.  But 
as  we  turn  the  plates  illustrating  the  Tervueren  collections, 
the  thought  inevitably  obtrudes  itself  that  in  a  strict  sense 
this  cannot  always  be  true.  A  whistle,  a  bit  of  horn,  or  a 
pebble  in  the  nature  of  the  case  is  incapable  of  arousing  the 
set  of  ideas  evoked  by  the  image  of  a  woman  nursing  an 
infant,  of  a  man  bending  over  a  drum,  or  of  the  grotesquer- 
ies  connected  with  the  representation  of  sex  organs.  When 
what  mere  artistic  fancy  has  created  is  hallowed  by  the 
fetich-monger’s  chant  or  pigment,  the  craftsman’s  fantasies 
adhere  to  and  aid  in  molding  the  popular  conception  of 
the  mysterious.  Take  a  concrete  case  from  the  Kwango, 
for  which  a  series  of  obviously  related  figures  have  been 
pictured,  the  extremes  representing,  respectively,  a  physiog¬ 
nomy  with  slightly  tilted  nose  and  a  full-fledged  recurved 
proboscis.  Assuming  that  the  more  realistic  effigy  is  the 
earliest,  we  can  readily  imagine  how  esthetic  playing  with 
the  motive  of  the  up-turned  nose  led  to  the  ludicrous  exag¬ 
geration  of  this  feature,  which  by  consecration  and  personi¬ 
fication  might  become  one  of  the  attributes  of  a  nascent 
deity.12 


RELIGION  AND  ART 


271 


However,  the  art  that  has  probably  contributed  in  by  far 
the  greatest  measure  to  the  conceptual  tenor  of  religion  is 
literature, — in  that  unwritten  form,  of  course,  represented 
by  orally  transmitted  folk-tales.  For,  though  the  outward 
shape  of  folklore  heroes  may  remain  inadequately  defined 
without  the  aid  of  plastic  and  pictorial  delineation,  their 
intellectual  and  moral  characters  can  be  determined  with  in¬ 
comparably  greater  precision  through  the  medium  of  nar¬ 
rative. 

As  we  have  seen  in  a  previous  chapter,  the  influence  of 
literary  fancy  on  religion  is  also  championed  by  Andrew 
Lang  and  Father  Schmidt,  but  in  a  sense  rather  different 
from  the  one  I  should  here  suggest.  Assuming  an  archaic 
concept  of  an  ethically  pure  Creator,  they  assert  that  this 
noble  ideal  has  been  covered  with  a  debasing  veneer  of  an¬ 
thropomorphic  simplicity  and  drollery,  nay,  ribaldry.  It  is 
not  easy  for  me  to  understand  how  a  sharply  defined  replica 
of  our  own  monotheistic  ideal  can  fail  to  withstand  whatever 
lure  there  may  be  in  folkloristic  fantasies.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  seems  entirely  possible  that  in  fulfillment  of  dis¬ 
tinct  human  demands  there  should  develop  in  mutual  inde¬ 
pendence  the  comic  episodes  of  a  trickster  cycle  and  the 
shadowy  character  of  a  creative  being;  that  the  origin  of 
specific  phenomena  in  society  or  the  universe  should  be 
ascribed  to  the  well-known  trickster ;  and  that  this  common 
element  of  creativeness  should  lead  to  a  fusion  and  con¬ 
fusion  of  the  two  characters  till  not  even  the  most  devout 
Crow  can  state  with  assurance  that  the  earth  was  made  by 
the  Sun  rather  than  by  Old-Man-Coyote.  My  point  is  that 
such  amalgamation  and  consequent  obscurity  would  be  in¬ 
conceivable  if  the  primary  notion  of  the  Sun  were  that  of 
an  ethically  immaculate  Supreme  Being;  but  that  a  vaguely 
and  only  incidentally  beneficent  creator  can  well  be  credited 


272  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

with  even  the  more  grotesquely  offensive  exploits  of  a 
trickster. 

Irrespective  of  this  moot-problem,  it  is  easy  to  illustrate 
how  literature  may  color  the  aspect  of  religious  figures  by 
comparing  two  versions  of  a  Shoshonean  solar  myth  re¬ 
corded  by  me  among  the  Lemhi  Shoshoni  of  Idaho  and 
their  congeners,  the  Southern  Ute  of  Colorado,  respectively. 

According  to  the  Shoshoni,  the  sun  was  at  one  time  so 
close  to  the  earth  as  to  burn  people  to  death.  A  council  was 
summoned,  and  the  Indians  delegated  Cottontail  to  shoot 
the  Sun.  He  concealed  himself,  and  as  the  Sun  rose  Cot¬ 
tontail  let  fly  arrow  after  arrow,  but  without  avail,  for  they 
were  all  consumed  by  the  Sun’s  heat.  At  last  he  used  his 
fire-drill  and  with  it  killed  the  Sun,  who  in  falling  burnt 
yellow  spots  on  his  enemy’s  neck  and  legs.  The  corpse  was 
cut  open,  the  gall  was  extracted,  and  then  another  tribes¬ 
man  raised  the  sun  to  his  present  height. 

It  is  clear  that  the  narrator’s  conception  of  the  solar  being 
fluctuates  between  that  of  a  mortal  with  human  organs,  and 
a  material  body  with  the  characteristic  store  of  heat;  and 
also  that  the  Sun  plays  throughout  a  purely  passive  part. 
Now  contrast  the  Ute  myth : 

Cottontail  was  wandering  about,  slaying  people.  He 
lay  in  ambush  for  the  Sun.  When  the  arrows  shot  against 
his  enemy  were  burnt  up,  he  took  a  club  and  with  it  knocked 
off  a  piece  of  him,  which  caused  a  conflagration.  Fleeing 
from  the  fire,  he  sought  refuge  under  a  certain  fireproof 
weed,  which  protected  him,  so  that  only  a  little  yellow  spot 
was  made  on  his  neck.  But  as  Cottontail  walked  on  the 
hot  ground,  his  legs  burned  off.  Finally  Sun  caused  a 
snowfall  that  put  out  the  fire.  Now,  however,  Sun  punished 
his  enemy  by  transforming  him  into  a  rabbit  and  decreeing 


RELIGION  AND  ART  27 3 

that  thenceforth  it  should  be  easy  for  any  one  to  track  him 
in  the  snow. 

First  of  all,  it  is  of  course  clear  that  we  are  dealing  with 
variants  of  a  single  Shoshonean  myth  centering  in  the  an¬ 
tagonism  of  Sun  and  Cottontail.  Now,  whether  we  assume 
the  Ute  or  the  Shoshoni  version  as  approximating  more 
closely  the  archetype  of  the  tale,  an  effect  of  the  story  on 
the  religious  notion  of  the  Sun  can  be  plausibly  argued. 
Let  us  postulate,  in  conformity  with  Lang’s  scheme,  the 
greater  antiquity  of  the  Ute  myth,  in  which  the  Sun  ap¬ 
pears  as  a  comparatively  dignified,  active,  powerful,  and 
avenging  transformer.  Then  the  Shoshoni,  by  modifying 
the  incidents  and  the  motivation  of  the  conflict,  have  appre¬ 
ciably  debased  the  earlier  picture  of  the  solar  god.  If  the 
alternative  hypothesis  is  entertained,  the  Ute  have  seconda¬ 
rily  embellished  it. 

I  am  not  at  all  disposed  to  deny  that  the  facts  admit  of 
a  somewhat  different  formulation.  It  may  very  well  be  that 
unless  the  Ute  had  entertained  a  preexisting  conception  of 
the  Sun  as  a  powerful  deity  they  would  not  have  developed 
the  tale  in  their  distinctive  way;  and  that  the  absence  of  a 
like  conception  paved  the  way  for  the  Shoshoni  variant. 
Such  intricate  inter-relations  are  precisely  what  I  contend 
for;  and  my  point  at  present  is  merely  that  the  mythopeic 
imagination  working  with  the  traditional  religious  stock- 
in-trade  may  sensibly  affect  the  core  of  the  religious  senti¬ 
ment,  may  tend  to  a  shifting  of  the  center  of  gravity,  so  to 
speak.  If  a  story-teller  has  adequate  authority  to  establish 
his  individual  version  as  the  standard,  then  it  may  appreci¬ 
ably  modify  the  reactions  to  traditional  sacred  figures,  add¬ 
ing  to  the  sanctity  of  some,  detracting  from  that  of  others 
by  the  definiteness  of  the  picture  thus  impressed  on  the 


274  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

auditors.  To  exemplify  the  power  of  the  literary  fancy  in 
this  direction  we  may  once  more  revert  to  the  Crow.  For 
some  Crow  Indians  the  legendary  Old-Woman’s-Grandson, 
slayer  of  monsters,  is  a  deity  prayed  to  for  help  on  the  vision- 
quest.  Some,  in  other  words,  have  become  more  deeply 
impressed  than  others  by  this  literary  figure  and  ascribe  to 
him  definite  divine  powers.  It  might  be  said  that  this  is 
merely  due  to  his  being  conceived  as  the  child  of  the  Sun. 
But  what  is  this  notion  itself,  of  solar  offspring,  if  not  the 
result  of  literary  fancy? 

Ceremonial  Drama 

The  naive  way  of  interpreting  the  festivals  of  primitive 
peoples  is  to  accept  as  authentic  the  explanations  of  the  par¬ 
ticipant.  Thus,  the  pledger  of  a  Crow  Sun  Dance  desires  the 
death  of  an  enemy;  hence  the  ceremony  must  be  a  prayer 
for  revenge.  The  Cheyenne  pledger  wishes  to  insure  a 
sick  relative’s  recovery;  hence  the  ceremony  is  a  prayer  for 
health.  Correspondingly  simple  views  might  be  advanced 
with  regard  to  the  Hawaiian  Luakini  or  the  Tongan  Har¬ 
vest  ceremony  and  a  host  of  other  equally  elaborate  per¬ 
formances  in  other  parts  of  the  world. 

Interesting  as  aboriginal  theories  as  to  aboriginal  conduct 
invariably  are,  they  are  no  more  to  be  accepted  unmodified 
in  matters  of  psychology  than  in  matters  of  history: 
the  native  does  not  know  his  motives  and  those  of  his 
collaborators  any  more  than  other  folk  do,  and  they  are 
only  revealed  by  a  critical  analysis  of  his  and  their  be¬ 
havior.  The  subject  is  a  large  one,  and  at  present  I  am 
merely  concerned  to  prove  the  co-existence  of  latent  esthetic 
factors  where  many  recognize  only  the  patent  religious 
ones. 


RELIGION  AND  ART 


275 


Take  the  case  of  the  Crow  Sun  Dance,  on  which  informa¬ 
tion  is  relatively  full.13  According  to  native  theory,  the 
essence  of  the  ritual  lies  in  the  vision-quest  of  a  mourner 
thirsting  for  revenge.  Instead  of  relying  on  a  revelation  to 
be  secured  by  his  own  efforts,  he  resorts  to  the  possessor  of 
a  sacred  doll,  whose  power  is  expected  to  grant  his  prayer. 
So  far  the  conception  corresponds  entirely  to  a  familiar 
Crow  procedure ;  the  only  varying  feature  lies  in  the  specific 
character  of  the  holy  object,  but  that  would  differ  in  any 
case  according  to  the  shaman’s  personal  “medicine.”  Why, 
however,  all  the  pother?  Why  do  not  this  pair  of  main  per¬ 
formers,  the  shaman  and  the  mourner,  go  about  their  business 
along  the  lines  of  the  ordinary  routine  of  a  war  expedition? 
Why  is  it  necessary  to  involve  the  whole  tribe  for  a  period 
of  months?  Why  must  a  special  lodge  be  erected  with  the 
assistance  of  all  the  men?  Why  do  dozens  of  young  men 
fast  and  torture  themselves  not  in  order  to  help  the  mourner 
gain  his  desired  end  but  to  achieve  their  own  longing  for  a 
vision  craved  for  purposes  strictly  their  own?  Why  do 
noted  warriors  recite  and  represent  their  deeds  and  receive 
cooked  buffalo  tongues  as  a  reward  of  past  bravery? 

It  is  perfectly  obvious  that  to  characterize  this  composite 
performance  as  a  prayer  for  revenge  is  to  fall  prey  to  a 
rationalistic  simplification  of  the  facts.  Doubtless  that  mo¬ 
tive  is  a  powerful  one  for  the  supplicant,  yet  even  for  him 
it  is  not  the  only  one.  It  is  obviously  different  for  the 
fellow-fasters,  though  their  participation  still  bears  a  defi¬ 
nitely  religious  stamp.  But  what  of  the  hundreds  of  on¬ 
lookers,  now  hurrying  to  bring  and  raise  the  lodge-poles,  now 
philandering  with  their  sweethearts  during  a  period  of  privi¬ 
leged  license,  now  boasting  of  their  prowess  or  engaging  in 
a  sham  combat?  Part  of  the  time,  no  doubt,  they  are  held 
awe-struck  and  spellbound  in  the  presence  of  a  prospective 


276  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

communion  with  the  supernatural.  But  for  the  rest  they  are 
thrilled  as  onlookers  or  supernumeraries  of  a  spectacular  play 
on  the  grandest  scale  within  the  tribal  comprehension ;  and 
if  all  the  complex  machinery  hinted  at  rather  than  described 
above  is  set  in  motion,  it  is  because  the  alleged  cause  of  the 
vast  undertaking  is  in  a  sense  nothing  but  its  occasion. 
Even  the  main  performers  are  not  of  course  unaffected  by 
the  display  of  general  activity :  whatever  else  they  may  be 
doing,  they  are  unconsciously  playing  a  part  for  the  ap¬ 
proval  of  an  audience.  Thus,  each  and  every  one  participat¬ 
ing  in  the  Sun  Dance  is  partly  affected  by  esthetic,  extra¬ 
religious  motives.  To  assert  from  this  point  of  view  that 
“ceremonialism  exists  for  ceremonialism’s  sake”  is  not  to 
forgo  a  psychological  formulation,  as  an  otherwise  friendly 
critic  oddly  imagines,14  but  to  penetrate  beyond  the  obvious 
interpretation  of  religious  behaviorism. 

References 

1  Harrison. 

2  Wundt :  103,  221,  230,  484,  504. 

3  J.  O.  Dorsey :  394-409. 

4  Mooney :  plates  CVII,  CIX. 

6  Jochelson,  1905-1908:  33,  88,  646  sq.,  668. 

6  Hoffman :  plates  III,  IV,  VIII. 

7  Boas,  1903. 

8  Muller:  12.  Breasted:  179.  Wundt:  215  f. 

9  Skinner,  1915  (a):  202. 

10  Skinner,  1913 :  74-78,  99,  102,  104  sq. 

11  Muller :  42,  368. 

12  Notes  analytiques:  149  sq.,  161,  212,  219,  239,  248;  plates 
XXX,  XLVII.  Weeks,  1913 :  254 ;  id.,  1914 :  232  sq.  Pechuel- 
Loesche. 

13  Lowie,  1914;  id.,  1915. 

14  Bartlett :  202, 


CHAPTER  XIII 


ASSOCIATION 

Individual  and  Social  Associations 

In  a  previous  chapter  I  have  pointed  out  how  largely  the 
thoughts  and  the  behavior  of  individuals  are  determined  by 
factors  arising  not  from  the  inborn  characteristics  of  the 
thinker  or  actor  but  from  the  cultural  conditions  affecting 
all  the  members  of  his  group  jointly.  This  principle  can  be 
amply  illustrated  by  the  associations  of  ideas  that  appear  in 
different  societies,  for  though  such  associations  have  been 
commonly  studied  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  individual 
psychology  it  is  not  difficult  to  prove  that  exclusive  atten¬ 
tion  to  this  aspect  of  the  phenomenon  fails  to  bring  adequate 
illumination.  This,  indeed,  is  fully  recognized  by  Profes¬ 
sor  Hoffding,  the  Danish  psychologist,  who  expresses  him¬ 
self  as  follows : 

Associations  of  ideas  may  ...  be  so  firm  and  constant  that  it 
is  forgotten  out  of  what  elements  they  have  arisen.  Some  of 
the  greatest  mysteries  in  the  province  of  psychology  owe  their 
origin  to  such  deeply  rooted  associations  of  ideas,  the  begin¬ 
ning  and  history  of  which  have  been  forgotten  .  .  .  that  which 
presents  itself  to  us  as  a  unity  and  as  necessarily  coherent,  may 
yet  have  arisen  from  the  fusing  of  different  elements.  It  de¬ 
mands  therefore  a  deeper  and  more  extensive  psychological 
analysis  than  the  dogmatizing  psychology  enters  into.  Such  an 
analysis  finds  an  especial  application  in  the  associations  which 
have  not  been  formed  in  the  actual  consciousness  of  the  individ¬ 
ual,  but  are  the  bequest  of  earlier  generations.  .  .  d 

277 


2;8  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

The  fusion  of  originally  distinct  elements  alluded  to  by 
the  Scandinavian  scholar  will  be  considered  in  a  later  sec¬ 
tion  of  this  chapter.  What  concerns  us  at  present  is  the 
extent  to  which  the  association  of  ideas  presented  by  a 
gi\en  person  can  be  accepted  as  a  genuinely  individual  men¬ 
tal  product  or  as  one  functionally  dependent  on  his  social 
heritage.  Perhaps  we  can  most  profitably  approach  the 
question  by  considering  Kent  and  Rosanoff  s  studies  in  word 
association,  which  by  many  of  their  colleagues  are  regarded 
as  classical.  After  preliminary  experimentation  these 
authors  hit  upon  a  list  of  one  hundred  words  and  recorded 
the  ideas  associated  with  those  of  the  list  by  a  thousand 
normal  subjects.  Thus  191  individuals  thought  of  “table” 
in  response  to  chair,  ’  while  only  a  single  one  gave  as  his 
reaction  office.  Treating  the  results  secured  as  a  standard 
for  testing  other  subjects,  the  investigators  distinguish  as 
“common”  those  reactions  represented  in  their  tables,  while 
those  not  found  there  are  called  “individual,”  though  not 
necessarily  abnormal.2  To  what  extent  is  it  possible  to  ap¬ 
ply  a  similar  technique  to  anthropological  material  ?  Scan¬ 
ning  Kent  and  RosanofFs  list,  we  are  first  of  all  impressed 
with  the  necessity  of  restricting  its  use  to  persons  living 
under  similar  cultural  conditions.  Apart  from  the  fact  that 
certain  abstract  ideas,  such  as  “music,”  might  not  have 
equivalents  in  other  cultures,  the  reactions  to  the  concept 
would  inevitably  differ  in  other  civilizations.  For  instance, 
“piano,”  “violin,”  “harmony,”  “Merry  Widow”  would  be  ex¬ 
cluded.  It  might  be  easy  to  suggest  plausible  equivalents  in 
the  second  culture,  but  their  precise  value  would  be  highly 
problematical.  The  utility  of  mass  investigations  of  this 
sort  rests  on  the  exposure  of  all  individuals  to  a  comparable 
educational  environment.  This  may  be  illustrated  from 
another  angle.  Of  the  American  subjects  studied  by  Kent 


ASSOCIATION 


279 

and  Rosanoff  only  one  responded  to  the  stimulus  “tobacco” 
with  “stars” ;  among  the  Crow,  who  identify  their  sacred 
tobacco  with  the  stars,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that  considerably 
more  than  one-tenth  of  one  per  cent  would  have  had  this 
reaction.  Similarly,  with  the  word  “eagle” ;  not  a  single 
American  associated  it  with  “thunder”  but  in  any  Crow  list 
the  two  ideas  would  certainly  be  coupled  with  a  relatively 
great  frequency.  Probably  some  reactions  would  coincide 
in  the  two  tests :  there  is  no  good  reason  why  some  Crow 
subjects  should  not  offer  as  the  second  member  of  the  pair 
such  words  as  “beak,”  “clouds,”  “feathers,”  or  “mountains.” 
But  evidently  individuality  in  our  psychologists’  sense  could 
not  be  established  by  the  Crow  list  for  Caucasian  subjects  or 
vice  versa:  the  coupling  of  “eagle”  and  “thunder”  would 
be  “common”  for  a  Crow,  “individual”  for  an  American, 
though  the  investigators’  wise  precaution  in  their  Appendix, 
that  anything  should  be  reckoned  a  normal  response  if  sym¬ 
bolized  by  the  eagle,  must  not  be  overlooked. 

Another  word  of  warning  must  be  added :  the  psychologi¬ 
cal  appraisal  of  a  given  association  is  impossible  without  a 
consideration  of  linguistic  data.  For  example,  in  Kent  and 
Rosanoff’s  list  the  “eagle”  is  linked  568  times  with  “bird.” 
This  would  be  impossible  for  the  Crow  for  the  simple  rea¬ 
son  that  the  eagle  as  the  bird  par  excellence  is  commonly 
designated  by  the  same  term  as  the  whole  zoological  class. 
Again,  the  constellation  of  the  Dipper  is  preeminently  as¬ 
sociated  by  the  Crow  with  the  number  seven.  Thus,  the 
Dipper  appears  to  Lone-tree  in  a  vision  as  a  man  but  is 
identified  when  he  rises,  exposing  the  seven  stars  on  his 
queue;  and  so,  when  Lone-tree  subsequently  goes  through 
a  rite  to  aid  a  woman  he  summons  six  other  men,  “for  with 
them  I  should  make  seven,  and  there  are  seven  stars  in  the 
Dipper.”  Again,  Hillside’s  brother  sees  the  constellation 


280  primitive  religion 

as  seven  persons  singing  songs  for  him.  Still  another  vision¬ 
ary  infers  that  four  visitants  are  the  Dipper  because  they 
sing  seven  songs  for  him ;  and  when  he  organizes  a  ceremony 
on  the  basis  of  his  revelation,  he  assembles  seven  married 
couples.  The  last  two  instances  are  especially  interesting, 
for  they  show  that  so  long  as  the  number  seven  appears  in 
some  fashion  no  incongruity  is  felt  in  the  representation 
of  the  Dipper.3 

Now,  plausible  as  this  association  may  seem,  there  is  no 
obvious  reason  for  the  exceptional  emphasis  on  the  numerical 
aspect  of  the  constellation  until  we  find  that  the  Dipper  in 
Crow  is  simply  called  “Seven  Stars,”  so  that  we  are  not 
dealing  with  an  ordinary  association  of  distinct  ideas  at  all. 

These  examples  show  how  important  it  is  to  take  into 
account  the  linguistic  data  involved.  This  is  indeed  obvi¬ 
ous  when  we  recall  that  in  Dr.  Jung’s  experiments  with  Swiss 
subjects  such  external  factors  as  similarity  in  sound  (green- 
greed)  or  the  conventional  coupling  of  terms  in  set  phrases 
(assault-battery)  played  an  important  part.4 

The  systematic  study  of  individual  associations  among 
illiterate  peoples  is  hardly  even  in  its  infancy,  but  an  un¬ 
published  series  collected  by  Dr.  Spier  among  the  Havasupai 
of  Arizona  strongly  impresses  one  with  the  psychic  unity 
of  mankind  as  regards  the  principles  at  work  in  producing 
responses  from  cue  words.  Thus,  there  is  “coordination” 
in  uniting  concepts  both  of  which  belong  to  the  same  general 
head,  but  also  “contrast,”  “predication,”  and,  as  might  be 
expected,  some  residual  instances  remain  obscure.  At  all 
events,  there  is  every  reason  to  look  for  an  explanation  of 
the  associations  of  primitive  folk  towards  the  same  psycho¬ 
logical  principles  operative  among  ourselves. 

A  fruitful  line  of  research  lies  in  the  study  of  variants  of 
myths  and  prayers.  Sometimes  these  may  be  so  stereotyped 


ASSOCIATION 


281 

that  for  generations  not  the  slightest  alteration  has  been 
permitted.  This,  for  example,  is  reported  for  some  Hawai-  * 
ian  hymns,  a  phenomenon  in  harmony  with  Polynesian  for¬ 
malism.  But  elsewhere  some  latitude  is  allowed,  and  the 
resulting  substitutions  may  repay  study  from  more  than  one 
angle.  We  can  thus  examine  the  versions  of  the  same  myth 
told  by  two  different  narrators.  We  can  also  profitably  ex¬ 
amine  the  variations  in  the  same  individual’s  account  at  dif¬ 
ferent  times,  for  that  will  indicate  the  range  of  ideas  evoked 
in  one  person  by  a  fixed  stimulus.  At  a  certain  stage  of 
the  Crow  Tobacco  ceremony  a  warrior  is  supposed  to  come 
running  and  to  report  what  he  has  seen  on  a  raid  and  on 
the  return  journey.  At  three  different  times  Gray-bull  dic¬ 
tated  to  me  in  his  own  language  the  actor’s  speech.  There 
is  of  course  far-reaching  similarity,  yet  enough  difference 
to  prove  that  the  form  was  not  standardized.  Thus,  in  all 
three  versions  the  speaker  stresses  the  abundance  of  the  To¬ 
bacco  crop  and  of  the  wild  cherries,  but  only  once  uses  a 
superlative  in  that  connection,  which  accordingly  is  a  dis¬ 
pensable  element.  In  all  three  variants  an  enemy  is  killed,  but 
while  the  narrator  twice  reports  how  he  captured  a  gun  the 
third  account  substitutes  the  striking  of  a  blow:  these  were 
both  conventional  deeds  of  valor  and  evidently  reckoned  as 
equivalent.  That  is,  the  cue  “victorious  exploit”  might 
arouse  in  Gray-bull’s  mind  either  “gun-capture”  or  “blow.” 

Such  individual  interpretations  are  significant  even  for 
a  purely  cultural  inquiry  because  the  traditional  associations 
described  by  Hofifding  have  not  always  been  traditional,  and 
whenever  we  observe  a  deviation  from  the  norm  we  have 
before  us  a  possible  starting-point  for  a  cultural  innovation. 
Unfortunately,  when  a  given  traditional  association  con¬ 
fronts  us,  it  is  often  wholly  enigmatic  from  a  psychological 
point  of  view,  that  is  to  say,  no  hint  remains  of  the  principle 


282 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


on  which  the  underlying  ideas  were  ever  linked  by  any  in¬ 
dividual  mind.  It  is  easy  enough  to  proceed  from  cue  to 
reaction,  but  to  work  backwards  is  more  difficult,  just  as  it 
is  harder  to  extract  a  cube  root  than  to  raise  a  number  to  the 
third  power.  Still  there  are  degrees  of  obscurity,  and  at  all 
events  a  brief  discussion  of  some  instances  may  illuminate 
the  nature  of  the  problem. 

To  begin  with  a  difficult  case,  Dr.  Spier  tells  me  that 
among  the  Havasupai  of  northern  Arizona  a  woman  will 
not  scratch  her  head  with  her  fingers  during  either  menstrual 
seclusion  or  the  period  preceding  and  following  childbirth; 
instead  she  uses  a  special  head-scratching  stick.  Evidently 
there  is  here  a  firm  association  between  certain  important 
periods  in  a  woman’s  life  and  the  desirable  mode  of  scratch¬ 
ing  her  head ;  and  since  it  is  not  a  sporadic  habit  but  a  gen¬ 
eral  observance,  it  would  be  vain  to  seek  for  the  origin  of 
the  custom  in  the  mental  reactions  of  individual  tribesmen. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  should  have  to  go  much  further  back 
than  tribal  history,  for  comparison  with  other  peoples  proves 
that  the  practice  is  found  among  the  Pima  of  southern 
Arizona,  in  California,  British  Columbia,  and,  indeed,  among 
the  Menomini  of  Wisconsin  and  the  Yuchi  of  South  Caro¬ 
lina.5  Evidently  the  usage  is  of  fair  antiquity  and  has  spread 
from  tribe  to  tribe  over  a  wide  area.  At  some  time  and 
place  the  association  must  have  sprung  into  existence  in  some 
individual  brain  and  struck  a  responsive  chord  in  the  social 
environment;  but  what  may  have  produced  this  original 
association  eludes  our  scrutiny. 

The  psychology  of  associations  is  not  always  equally 
opaque.  The  Jagga  of  East  Africa  view  multiple  births  with 
alarm  as  portending  bad  luck :  triplets  are  accordingly  killed, 
their  mother  being  despised  as  though  guilty  of  a  heinous 
crime,  while  in  case  of  twins  one  of  the  infants  is  regularly 


ASSOCIATION 


283 

strangled.  Obviously  the  same  qualification  holds  here 
as  in  the  preceding  case :  we  are  dealing  not  with  an  idiosyn¬ 
crasy  but  with  a  rule  imposed  by  tradition.  Nevertheless, 
here  the  motive  does  not  lie  wholly  shrouded  in  mystery,  and 
we  can  apply  with  some  show  of  plausibility  the  explanation 
given  for  a  similar  custom  in  Central  Australia,  to  wit,  that 
twins  “are  usually  destroyed  at  once  as  something  uncanny.” 
In  other  words,  the  Negroes,  like  the  Australians,  may  have 
reached  the  conclusion  that  what  was  out  of  the  ordinary 
was  necessarily  weird  and  pregnant  with  evil  potency. 
However,  further  study  would  show  that  even  among  fel- 
low-Bantu  tribes  the  interpretation  does  not  conform  to 
that  of  the  Jagga,  is  indeed  antithetical  inasmuch  as  twins 
are  viewed  as  omens  of  good  fortune.  Yet  a  modification 
of  our  hypothesis  would  bring  the  new  facts  into  line  with 
a  generic  interpretative  principle:  we  may  assume  that  the 
Extraordinary  is  potentially  ambivalent,  that  it  may  be  cred¬ 
ited  with  either  a  mysterious  power  to  confer  benefits  or 
a  weird  tendency  to  destroy,  and  which  of  the  alternatives 
prevails  is  a  matter  of  chance  according  to  the  specific  cir¬ 
cumstances  surrounding  the  origin  of  the  custom.  Of  course, 
such  a  general  interpretation  not  only  leaves  undetermined 
the  path  actually  followed  but  also  fails  to  account  for  speci¬ 
fic  ideas  reported,  such  as  the  Nootka  notion  that  twins  are 
intimately  connected  with  the  salmon,  which  Mrs.  Spier 
informs  me  also  occurs  among  the  Klallam.6 

There  are,  however,  still  other  cases  in  which  the  processes 
seem  so  transparent  that  it  requires  hyper-skepticism  to  doubt 
the  patent  cause  of  an  association.  Thus,  granting  that 
the  hands  are  brought  into  juxtaposition  with  the  idea  of  sex 
differentiation,  we  understand  at  once  why  a  Thonga  con¬ 
nects  the  left  hand  with  the  female  sex  and  the  right  with 
males.7  Traditional  though  the  association  may  be, 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


284 

we  see  at  once  its  aptness,  the  motive  for  its  currency  and 
for  its  invention. 

Among  the  constantly  recurring  associations  may  be  noted 
those  by  which  a  specific  value  is  attached  to  certain  num¬ 
bers.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that  the  Crow,  for  example, 
like  the  majority  of  North  American  tribes,  regard  four 
as  the  mystic  number,  while  the  Paviotso  ascribe  similar 
significance  to  five.  While  it  is  of  course  impossible  to 
give  an  ultimate  explanation  of  numerical  associations  found 
in  a  given  tribe,  we  are  in  a  position  to  range  these  phe¬ 
nomena  with  comparable  psychological  manifestations  of 
educated  Europeans.  In  his  well-known  Inquiries  into  Hu¬ 
man  Faculty  and  its  Development  Francis  Galton  records 
that  he  himself  associated  even  numbers  with  the  male  sex, 
while  his  informants  frequently  invested  numbers  with  defi¬ 
nite  personalities, — one  of  them  described  Three  as  a  good 
old  friend,  another  as  a  treacherous  sneak,  and  so  forth. 
As  a  boy  I  myself  had  a  special  fondness  for  both  Three  and 
Four,  but  felt  that  somehow  Three  was  closer  to  me  so  that 
I  rather  resented  its  inferiority  to  Four. 

In  correlating  the  ethnographic  data  with  the  Galtonian 
phenomena  it  is  necessary  to  define  exactly  what  is  meant. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  reason  to  suppose  that  an  individual 
Crow  has  a  greater  inborn  tendency  to  view  four  as  sacred 
than  a  random  Caucasian :  if  he  so  regards  it,  it  is  because  his 
reaction  is  predetermined  by  the  cultural  tradition  that  he 
has  shared  from  early  childhood.  The  psychological  ex¬ 
planation  of  a  particular  Crow’s  attitude  towards  four  has 
probably  nothing  to  do  with  his  individual  mental  reactions 
to  the  number,  but  solely  with  his  individual  reaction  to 
any  social  norm  whatsoever.  But  at  some  time  some  one 
must  have  had  a  differential  feeling  for  four  as  compared 
with  other  numbers  and  created  the  present  standard  by  his 


ASSOCIATION 


285 

personal  prestige;  and  it  is  that  pre-normative  individual 
reaction  which  we  can  with  some  show  of  reason  connect 
with  the  data  gathered  by  Galton.  A  subsidiary  and  per¬ 
haps  even  equally  important  source  of  mystic  numbers  has 
been  suggested  by  Boas,  to  wit,  the  esthetic  satisfaction 
derived  from  rhythmic  repetition,  so  that  the  difference  in 
sacred  numbers  would  correspond  to  a  difference  in  favor¬ 
ite  rhythms.8 

In  this  context  it  may  be  well  to  point  out  that  modern 
psychology  notes  a  variety  of  associations  as  more  or  less 
commonplace  in  our  own  society  that  are  not  one  whit  less 
fanciful  than  some  of  those  recorded  among  illiterate  peo¬ 
ples.  The  late  Miss  Josephine  Meyer,  reader  of  the  Theater 
Guild  in  New  York,  told  me  that  she  associated  all  manner 
of  ideas  with  the  letters  of  our  alphabet:  “P”  appeared  to 
her  as  the  most  gentlemanly,  “m”  as  the  mother  of  “n,” 
and  so  forth.  Under  this  heading,  of  course,  comes  the 
phenomenon  latterly  described  as  “synesthesia,”  of  which 
colored  audition  is  the  commonest  form.  One  of  Gabon’s 
correspondents  associated  letters  of  the  alphabet  with  definite 
colors  and  conversely  read  words  into  color  patterns,  another 
always  associated  Tuesday  with  a  gray  sky  color,  and  Friday 
with  a  dull  yellow  smudge.  It  is  an  undecided  question 
whether  such  associations  represent  an  innate  idiosyncrasy: 
Woodworth  suggests  as  the  likelier  guess  “that  the  extra 
sensations  are  images  that  have  become  firmly  attached  to 
their  substitute  stimuli  during  early  childhood.”  9 

Symbolism 

The  types  of  association  last  considered  naturally  lead  to 
a  discussion  of  symbolism.  If,  say,  a  certain  object  or  idea 
invariably  appears  in  connection  with  a  certain  color,  the 


286 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


color  can  come  to  acquire  symbolic  value  and  will  evoke  the 
image  or  concept  of  its  regular  concomitant.  Sometimes  an 
association  of  this  character  is  indirect,  that  is,  the  sym¬ 
bol  is  not  immediately  associated  with  the  basic  emotional 
value  but  only  through  a  series  of  intervening  links.  Thus, 
a  species  of  snake  among  the  Andamanese  is  an  emblem  of 
well-being  not  in  its  own  right,  as  it  were,  but  because  it  is 
associated  with  honey,  which  besides  its  intrinsic  attractive¬ 
ness  is  again  associated  with  the  season  of  fine  weather. 
Similarly,  the  Western  Dakota  may  represent  the  whirlwind 
by  narrow  upright  figures  that  directly  stand  for  the  chrysa¬ 
lis  of  a  moth  from  which  the  whirlwind  is  derived.10 

It  would  be  worth  while  to  determine  by  an  extensive 
survey  of  the  world  to  what  extent  certain  of  the  simpler 
forms  of  symbolism  are  rooted  in  the  general  mental  con¬ 
stitution  of  mankind.  For  example,  is  red,  as  A.  R.  Brown 
suggests,  a  general  emblem  of  activity  and  force  because  of 
its  dynamogenic  potency?  The  idea  is  attractive,  yet  we 
must  be  on  our  guard  against  assuming  that  even  in  the 
simplest  cases  the  interpretation  is  fully  determined.  Thus, 
there  is  for  us  a  natural  fitness  in  the  Omaha  custom  of 
representing  a  vision  of  the  Night  by  blackening  part  of 
the  lodge-cover ;  and  similarly  we  understand  at  once  why  a 
Menomini  boy  on  his  puberty  fast  should  blacken  his  face 
to  indicate  sadness  and  thus  arouse  the  compassion  of  the 
powers  he  is  supplicating.  But  the  very  fact  that  black  is 
so  readily  connected  with  death  makes  it  possible  to  con¬ 
vert  it  from  a  symbol  of  grief  into  one  of  joy;  and  accord¬ 
ingly  we  find  that  the  Crow  warriors  who  had  slain  an  enemy 
returned  with  blackened  faces  as  a  sign  of  victory. 

Interesting  as  such  reflections  are  from  a  psychological 
point  of  view,  for  our  present  purpose  they  must  yield  pre¬ 
cedence  to  another,  to  wit,  the  religious  value  of  the  symbol. 


ASSOCIATION 


287 

The  significance  of  the  cross  in  Christianity  or  the  lotus- 
flower  in  Buddhism  is  too  well-known  to  require  more  than  a 
passing  reference.  That  there  are  parallel  instances  in  primi¬ 
tive  life  is  clear  from  the  example,  several  times  quoted,  of 
the  significance  attached  to  a  feather  revealed  in  a  Crow 
vision.  This  case  is  a  favorable  one  for  elucidating  the 
source  of  the  symbol's  value.  It  is  too  readily  assumed  that 
since  the  symbol  stands  for  something  else,  its  potency  is 
derivative  from  that  something,  and  the  overshadowing 
influence  exerted  by  an  apparently  secondary  phenomenon 
remains  rather  enigmatic.  Thus,  the  spontaneous  emotion 
evoked  by  the  flag  of  one’s  country  is  not  easily  explicable 
on  this  view,  nor  the  Crow’s  appraisal  of  his  feather  as  “the 
greatest  thing  in  the  world.”  In  both  cases  the  difficulty 
lies  in  the  assumption  of  an  inapplicable  psychological  atti¬ 
tude.  Only  in  an  intellectualistic  sense  does  the  flag  or  feather 
represent  an  ulterior  entity  of  higher  order;  on  the  affective 
plane,  either  represents  nothing  apart  from  itself  but  forms 
an  integral  part  of  an  invaluable  indivisible  emotional  ex¬ 
perience  that  immediately  asserts  itself  with  all  the  force  of 
an  unanalysable  manifestation  of  the  Extraordinary  in 
the  special  form  of  the  Sacred.  This  reaction  appears  clearly 
in  a  statement  made  by  an  Hidatsa  woman  to  the  effect  that 
Indian  corn  and  the  wild  geese  were  one  and  the  same 
thing.  It  was  not  that  she  was  of  pre-logical  mentality  in 
Levy-Bruhl’s  sense,  that  is,  incapable  in  ordinary  life  of 
separating  the  idea  of  the  plant  from  that  of  the  birds,  but 
that  in  the  given  context  both  were  associated  in  the  same 
sacred  complex  and  stood  for  that  complex :  whether  one  or 
the  other  cue  was  used  to  evoke  the  essential  emotional 
state,  was  a  matter  of  complete  indifference. 


288 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


Rationalization 

Whatever  sins  may  have  been  committed  in  the  name  of 
psycho-analysis,  it  has  the  great  merit  of  having  clearly 
brought  out  and  duly  stressed  the  concept  of  “rationaliza¬ 
tion,”  than  which  few  principles  are  more  important  for 
an  understanding  of  human  behavior.  It  is  a  fact  of  con¬ 
stant  observation  in  daily  life,  in  the  psychiatric  clinic,  and, 
we  may  add,  among  primitive  peoples,  that  man  is  not_so 
much  a  rational  as  a  rationalizing  creature.  That  is,  he  does 
not  act  or  work  towards  conclusions  by  the  careful  sifting 
of  evidence  but  acquires  them  by  some  irrational  process, 
subsequently  glossing  over  the  logical  delinquency  by  secon¬ 
dary  apologetic  argumentation.  Religion,  with  its  predomin¬ 
antly  emotional  basis,  is  naturally  a  favorite  haunt  of  ra¬ 
tionalizers  ;  but  in  turn  it  supplies  some  of  the  basic  schemes 
for  rationalizing  conduct  of  a  primarily  nonreligious  nature. 
Let  us  consider  the  latter  case  first. 

Where,  as  among  the  Crow  and  their  neighbors,  the  vision 
assumes  a  dominant  position  in  religion,  its  scope  may  easily 
be  extended  so  as  to  embrace  potentially  any  and  every 
phase  of  human  existence.  Not  only  does  the  vision  become 
the  theoretical  origin  of  every  ceremonial,  nay,  of  every 
deviation  in  ritualistic  detail,  or  of  such  markedly  abnormal 
behavior  as  that  of  the  berdache,  but  success  and  failure  are 
interpreted  in  terms  of  the  basic  concept  and,  consistently 
enough,  every  war-raid  may  require  the  sanction  of  a  super¬ 
natural  urging.  “White  men,”  says  the  Indian,  “have  ideas ; 
the  Indians  have  visions;”  or  he  may  even  go  so  far  as  the 
Blackfoot  who  told  Dr.  Wissler  that  the  inventor  of  the 
phonograph  must  have  had  a  vision  of  the  instrument  and 
received  a  circumstantial  description  of  its  mechanism. 
Among  the  Western  Dakota  the  mythical  Double  Woman  as 


ASSOCIATION  289 

a  culture-heroine  is  supposed  to  have  instructed  a  woman 
through  dreams  in  the  art  of  decorative  design  composition: 
sometimes  the  entire  piece  of  work  is  exhibited  in  finished 
condition,  sometimes  the  design  appears  on  a  rock  or  cliff. 
By  a  transparent  association  twin  sisters  are  believed  to 
dream  similar  designs,  though  sometimes  other  Indian  women 
may  get  like  dreams  also  derived  from  the  same  mythic 
source.  “Such  designs  are  copied  by  other  women,  and  thus 
become  a  part  of  the  art  common  to  all.”  But  an  examination 
of  putative  dream  designs  convinced  Wissler  that  they  did 
not  differ  in  principle  from  other  designs,  and  it  is  perfectly 
obvious  that  certain  mystically  inclined  individuals  ascribe  a 
supernatural  origin  to  esthetic  notions  derived  from  the 
traditional  stock  of  art  patterns  and  modified  by  such  minor 
variations  as  their  own  taste  and  fancy  suggested . 

A  dream  design  is  .  .  .  not  so  much  a  distinct  type  of  design 
as  an  illustration  of  the  manner  in  which  Dakota  philosophy  ac¬ 
counts  for  the  origin  of  the  present  styles  of  decorative  art.11 

Among  the  most  delicious  rationalizations  on  record  is 
that  by  which  the  Masai  of  East  Africa  justify  their  con¬ 
tempt  for  the  blacksmiths’  guild, — the  pariah  caste  of  their 
society.  The  blacksmiths,  it  is  alleged,  tempt  the  Masai 
to  commit  bloodshed  by  the  implements  they  manufacture, 
hence  they  merit  ethical  condemnation.  In  order  to  ap¬ 
preciate  the  full  extent  to  which  this  is  mere  mockery  of  a 
genuine  reason,  it  is  necessary  to  recall  that  the  Masai  are 
one  of  the  most  warlike  peoples  of  Africa  and  that  success¬ 
ful  preying  on  their  neighbors  is  a  prerequisite  to  social 
prestige  in  their  community.  Of  the  same  piece  is  the  war¬ 
rant  alleged  by  them  for  the  undertaking  of  these  hostile 
raids :  God,  they  say,  gave  all  the  cattle  in  the  world  to  the 


290  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

Masai;  if  their  Bantu  neighbors  would  not  exhibit  such  re¬ 
luctance  in  giving  up  the  livestock  in  their  possession,  the 
Masai  would  not  be  driven  to  recover  their  property  by 
force.  Here  cupidity  is  plainly  rationalized  by  an  appeal  to 
the  Divine  Will.12 

In  many  mythologies  of  primitive  peoples  there  figures  a 
character  generally  described  as  the  culture-hero,  that  is, 
the  inventor  or  discoverer  of  useful  arts  and  other  cultural 
phenomena.  It  is  by  no  means  certain  that  this  personality 
always  bears  a  “religious”  character  in  the  sense  adopted 
in  this  book,  but  in  many  instances  this  is  undoubtedly  the 
case.  Now  the  type  of  explanation  offered  by  the  natives 
to  explain  the  origin  of,  say,  fire-making  or  pottery  is  readily 
extended  to  other  elements  of  social  life,  such  as  social 
rules  and  prohibitions.  A  Crow  will  thus  naturally  refer 
to  Old-Man-Coyote  the  institution  of  the  “joking-relation- 
ship,”  by  which  a  man  may  play  practical  jokes  on  certain 
specially  defined  persons  in  the  tribe. 

Psychologically,  all  such  cases  do  not  of  course  differ 
from  those  in  which  the  phenomenon  that  is  accounted  for 
in  religious  terms  belongs  itself  to  the  religious  category. 
Thus,  the  Crow  justifies  even  so  trivial  a  matter  as  the  use 
of  a  specific  type  of  facial  paint  in  a  rite  by  a  corresponding 
revelation.  Sometimes  the  generic  motive  of  finding  a  ra¬ 
tionalization  in  accordance  with  the  current  type  of  ex¬ 
planation  is  skillfully  wielded  on  behalf  of  egotistic  motives. 
When  a  Plains  Indian  or  a  Menomini  shaman  cannot  con¬ 
ceive  the  possibility  of  giving  away  his  ceremonial  preroga¬ 
tives  even  to  his  own  children  because  his  supernatural  pa¬ 
tron  prescribed  that  he  must  receive  compensation  therefor, 
the  case  is  obvious.  For  it  is  greed  that  would  subconsciously 
project  such  a  stipulation  into  the  subjective  experience,  no 
matter  how  honestly  the  native  may  plead  a  supernatural 


ASSOCIATION 


291 


decree.  Probabty  some  of  the  specific  taboos  so  commonly 
recorded  among  these  Indians  permit  of  a  somewhat  similar 
interpretation.  Thus,  One-blue-bead  remarked  to  me: 

My  medicine  forbids  me  to  make  myself  bleed,  for  example, 
to  cut  off  my  fingers ;  and  if  meat  has  blood  on  it,  I  won’t  eat  it. 
At  the  time  of  my  vision  I  was  told  not  to  eat  blood  and  not  to 
make  myself  bleed. 

I  think  we  can  plausibly  assume  that  the  Crow  witness  had 
a  personal  idiosyncrasy  relating  to  blood  and,  especially,  a 
repugnance  to  the  self-torture  so  prominent  in  his  tribe. 
Auto-suggestion  was  perhaps  strong  enough  to  conjure  up 
the  coveted  vision  without  the  hateful  laceration  or  finger¬ 
cutting,  and  rationalization  would  provide  an  excellent  war¬ 
rant  from  the  aboriginal  point  of  view  for  avoidance  of  the 
customary  usage. 

The  rationalizing  tendencies  are  especially  conspicuous  in 
the  alleged  origin  and  purpose  of  ceremonial,  a  subdivision 
of  the  subject  sufficiently  important  to  merit  separate  treat¬ 
ment. 


Ritualistic  Myths  and  Ritualistic  Ends 

The  ceremonials  of  primitive  peoples  often  receive  an 
etiological  and  a  teleological  justification :  they  are  avowedly 
performed  because  of  events  set  forth  in  an  explanatory  ori¬ 
gin  myth  and  for  a  definite,  plausible  purpose, — say,  as  a 
thanksgiving  for  past  favors  or  as  a  prayer  for  the  public  wel¬ 
fare.  However,  it  can  be  proved  beyond  the  possibility  of 
doubt  that  many  of  these  explanations  are  rationalizations 
which  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  real  history  of  the  case. 
This  is  obvious  where  the  entire  ceremonial  is  simply  pro- 


292 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


jected  into  the  past  as  the  ritual  taught  by  a  supernatural 
being  or  clandestinely  observed  by  the  founder  as  it  is  per¬ 
formed  by  supernatural  beings.  Furthermore,  as  Ehren- 
reich  among  others  has  pointed  out,  we  find  again  and  again 
that  like  rituals  of  neighboring  peoples  are  linked  with  ut¬ 
terly  distinct  myths:  the  similarity  of  the  procedure  is  so 
great  that  it  cannot  have  been  evolved  more  than  once,  hence 
it  must  have  spread  from  one  tribe  to  another  so  that  except 
in  the  center  of  dissemination  the  explanatory  myths  must 
by  logical  necessity  be  afterthoughts ;  “and,  with  the  possi¬ 
bility  of  such  explanation  established,  it  becomes  psycho¬ 
logically  justifiable  to  treat  the  residual  case  as  falling  under 
the  same  category.” 13 

The  mode  of  reasoning  applied  here  coincides  absolutely 
with  that  which  holds  for  the  interpretation  of  other  ex¬ 
planatory  myths,  of  which  the  ritualistic  legends  under  dis¬ 
cussion  form  only  a  special  subdivision.  For  instance,  the 
Navaho  of  Arizona  tell  a  quaint  story  ostensibly  accounting 
for  the  color  of  the  coyote’s  eyes.  The  Coyote  of  their  tradi¬ 
tions  learnt  the  trick  of  sending  his  eyes  out  of  their  sockets 
and  recalling  them,  but  was  warned  not  to  try  the  perform¬ 
ance  too  frequently.  Casting  prudence  to  the  winds,  he  dis¬ 
obeyed  and  lost  his  power  of  recovery,  but  after  wandering 
about  in  blindness  he  secured  orbs  of  pine  gum,  whence  his 
yellow  eyes  to-day.  If  this  were  the  only  version  of  the 
story,  we  might  accept  the  naive  assumption  that  the  natives, 
struck  with  the  coyote’s  appearance,  excogitated  a  series  of 
episodes  to  account  for  it.  But  the  Arapaho  of  Wyoming 
tell  the  same  story  with  a  different  ending :  their  blind  hero 
dupes  Mole  into  lending  him  his  eyes,  whence  the  mole’s 
blindness  to-day.14:  The  stable  elements  of  the  two  variants 
cannot  possibly  be  derived  from  these  two  utterly  diverse 
points  of  departure;  and  when  still  other  versions  are  dis- 


ASSOCIATION 


293 


covered  without  any  explanatory  feature,  the  case  is  clear : 
the  plot  alone  has  been  diffused  from  a  common  center,  and 
in  several  instances  distinct  explanatory  afterthoughts  have 
been  added. 

Now,  as  hinted  above,  the  situation  is  precisely  similar 
when  we  are  dealing  with  ritualistic  myths:  the  persistent 
element  corresponding  to  the  stable  plot  of  the  ‘‘Eye- jug¬ 
gler”  story  is  the  fixed  procedure,  while  the  legendary  justi¬ 
fication  is  the  equivalent  of  the  explanatory  frill  at  the  end. 
Having  stated  the  proposition  in  general  terms,  it  remains 
to  furnish  some  illustrations  from  the  well-nigh  inexhausti¬ 
ble  material  at  hand.  In  this  connection  it  would  be  artificial 
to  separate  the  mythical  and  the  teleological  justification  of 
ceremonial  since  both  frequently  belong  to  the  same  type  of 
psychological  manifestations. 

Among  some  of  the  Australian  tribes  the  rite  of  knocking 
out  teeth  is  an  integral  part  of  the  boys’  initiation,  which 
here  as  in  New  Guinea  constitutes  a  festival  of  the  first  order 
of  importance.  But  in  Central  Australia  the  usage  appears 
without  this  context  and  at  least  two  wholly  different  justifi¬ 
cations  are  offered.  The  Kaitish  nowadays  merely  practice 
the  custom  in  order  to  improve  their  personal  appearance, 
but  explain  that  in  the  mythical  period  teeth  were  knocked 
out  because  the  water  tasted  better  without  one  of  them. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Tjingilli  knock  out  teeth  towards  the 
close  of  the  rainy  season  and  throw  the  tooth  into  a  water- 
hole  so  that  it  may  drive  the  rain  and  clouds  away.  Hie 
Gnanji  not  only  expect  the  cessation  of  rain  but  an  increase 
of  water-lilies  to  follow  a  similar  procedure.15 

To  take  an  equally  simple  case  from  America,  the  sacri¬ 
fice  of  a  finger-joint  to  propitiate  the  beings  from  whom  a 
revelation  is  sought  figures  as  a  fairly  widespread  Plains  In¬ 
dian  custom,  being  found  among  the  Crow,  Mandan,  Ari- 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


294 

kara,  and  Hidatsa.  But  the  same  practice  occurs  in  this 
area  as  a  token  of  mourning.  Indeed,  among  the  Crow  the 
women  usually  cut  off  their  fingers  in  connection  with  mortu¬ 
ary  rites  while  the  men  go  through  the  performance  when 
fasting  for  a  vision.  Whichever  of  the  objects  is  the  older, 
a  re-adaptation  of  the  purpose  has  occurred. 

To  turn  to  more  pretentious  rituals,  the  Crow  share 
with  their  Black  foot  neighbors  a  ceremonial  planting  of 
sacred  Tobacco  sufficiently  similar  to  exclude  independent 
invention.  According  to  the  most  popular  Crow  version,  the 
discovery  of  the  Tobacco  dates  back  to  the  separation  from 
the  Hidatsa,  when  one  of  two  brothers  was  adopted  by  the 
stars,  with  which  the  Tobacco  is  somehow  identified,  and  re¬ 
ceived  instructions  as  to  the  ceremony.  But  with  the  Black- 
foot  the  Tobacco  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  Beaver  ritual, 
transmitted  originally  by  a  Beaver  who  after  abducting  a 
married  woman  indemnified  her  husband  by  sending  her 
back  with  the  Beaver  bundle.16 

Again,  Tozzer  and  Haeberlin  have  proved  that  the  Navaho 
and  the  Hopi  of  Arizona  go  through  an  extraordinarily  simi¬ 
lar  series  of  ritualistic  details,  such  as  the  use  of  prayer- 
sticks,  a  specific  type  of  mask,  the  swinging  of  a  bull-roarer. 
To  doubt  that  these  identities  are  due  to  borrowing  would  be 
madness;  yet  the  motive  is  quite  distinct.  “While  the  great 
Navaho  ceremonies  are  all  focused  on  the  healing  of  the 
sick,  those  of  the  Hopi  are  obviously  directed  on  the  produc¬ 
tion  of  fertility  for  the  fields.”  The  Hopi  bull-roarer,  for 
example,  is  twirled  as  a  magical  instrument  for  procuring 
rain;  the  Navaho  shaman  applies  the  same  object  to  the  pa¬ 
tient’s  body  by  way  of  curing  him.  Haeberlin  has  further 
illustrated  his  point  by  the  ceremonial  associations  of  a 
widespread  game, — that  of  hurling  a  dart  at  a  rolling  hoop. 
The  hunting  tribes  of  the  Plains  play  the  game  for  the  pur- 


ASSOCIATION 


295 


pose  of  magically  calling  buffalo,  the  hoop  sometimes  repre¬ 
senting  the  animal,  which  is  symbolically  slain  by  the  dart 
touching  it.  But  with  a  similar  ceremonial  pastime  the  Hopi 
connect  their  favorite  concept :  the  act  of  shooting  the  dart 
typifies  lightning  striking  in  a  cornfield,  “an  event  which  is 
regarded  as  the  acme  of  fertilization.”  17 

One  of  the  most  striking  illustrations  of  the  principle  here 
expounded  is  provided  by  the  Sun  Dance,  as  has  been  con¬ 
vincingly  demonstrated  by  Spier.18  Performed  by  about 
twenty  Plains  Indian  tribes,  this  festival  displays  a  remarka¬ 
ble  stability  as  to  objective  traits.  For  example,  in  most  in¬ 
stances  the  participants  engage  in  spectacular  self-torture ;  a 
tree  designed  for  use  in  the  ceremonial  structure  is  com¬ 
monly  scouted  for,  felled,  and  struck  as  though  it  were  an 
enemy;  more  than  half  of  the  tribes  erect  an  altar  of  which 
a  buffalo  skull  forms  the  most  conspicuous  object;  and  so 
forth.  Contrasted  with  such  similarity  of  behavior,  there  is 
a  striking  disparity  as  to  avowed  purpose.  A  Crow,  as  we 
have  seen,  pledged  a  performance  exclusively  to  secure  a 
vision  promising  him  revenge  for  the  slaying  of  a  kinsman. 
An  Arapaho  did  so  normally  to  gain  aid  in  sickness  or  dan¬ 
ger  threatening  his  family.  Among  the  Ponca,  individual 
vows  did  not  figure  at  all ;  the  dance  was  executed  annually 
by  a  fraternity  of  Thunder  men  at  the  chief’s  behest.  Per¬ 
haps  the  best  possible  example  is  provided  by  a  compari¬ 
son  of  the  Arapaho  and  Cheyenne  performances,  which  are 
so  similar  that  “members  of  one  tribe  find  no  difficulty  in 
participating  in  the  dance  of  the  other,  for  even  the  larger 
differences  relate  only  to  details.”  Yet  neither  the  etiologi¬ 
cal  myths  nor  the  teleological  explanations  show  like  agree¬ 
ment.  The  Cheyenne  explain  that  the  culture  hero  entered 
a  mountain  resembling  the  Sun  Dance  structure  and  was 
there  instructed  in  the  ceremony,  which  on  his  return  rescued 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


296 

the  people  from  starvation;  while  the  Arapaho  account  is 
merged  in  their  general  origin  myth  with  emphasis  on  the 
flat-pipe  that  figures  as  their  great  sacred  object.  As  for  the 
end  sought,  it  is  true  that  in  both  instances  the  initiative  is 
taken  by  an  individual  vowing  a  dance  to  avert  danger ;  but 
with  the  Cheyenne  the  main  point  is  to  reanimate  the  earth 
and  its  life,  for  example,  to  call  the  buffalo.  This  is  of 
course  the  main  point  only  from  the  angle  of  priestly  of¬ 
ficialdom  ;  for  we  saw  in  the  preceding  chapter  how  varying 
are  the  motives  in  a  large  ceremony  of  this  type,  and  that 
among  them  purely  or  preponderantly  esthetic  factors  play  a 
large  part. 

Some  tribes  manifest  an  interesting  tendency  to  use  for 
purposes  of  etiological  rationalization  folk-tales  that  are 
otherwise  devoid  of  ritualistic  meaning.  For  example,  the 
Heiltsuk  of  British  Columbia  explain  the  establishment  of 
the  Cannibal  society  by  reciting  the  story  of  the  woman  who 
gave  birth  to  dogs, — a  plot  told  by  the  Eskimo,  the  Northern 
Athabaskans,  and  even  other  Northwest  Coast  tribes  without 
thought  of  ceremony.  In  the  Plains  area  the  Blackfoot  and 
the  Hidatsa  exhibit  the  same  inclination.  Thus,  the  Hidatsa 
do  not  content  themselves  with  ascribing  certain  offerings 
planted  by  the  bank  of  the  Missouri  to  the  dictates  of  a  local 
snake-deity,  but  connect  the  rite  with  the  tradition  of  a 
young  man  who  burnt  his  way  through  a  gigantic  snake  lying- 
in  his  path,  ate  of  the  flesh  thus  cooked,  and  in  consequence 
was  himself  transformed  into  a  serpent.  Fully  half  a  dozen 
of  the  neighboring  groups  have  the  same  narrative  as  a  mere 
folk-tale. 

Similarly,  the  Hidatsa  Bird  ceremony  is  not  merely  traced 
to  the  favor  of  supernatural  birds  but  is  connected  with  one 
of  the  most  widespread  mythological  motives  on  the  conti¬ 
nent, — the  unremitting  warfare  between  the  Thunderbirds 


ASSOCIATION 


297 


and  a  water-monster.  The  method  of  fitting  this  conception 
into  a  ceremonial  context  will  repay  analysis.  To  tell  the 
myth  as  it  is  known  to  the  participants  in  the  ceremony :  the 
Thunderbirds  once  carried  a  good  Hidatsa  hunter,  Packs- 
antelope,  to  their  mountain  in  order  to  get  his  assistance 
against  a  water-snake  destroying  their  young.  He  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  slaying  the  monster  for  them,  was  transformed 
into  one  of  their  number,  and  killed  various  powerful  beings 
until  a  supernatural  denizen  of  the  Missouri  seized  him, 
changed  him  back  into  human  shape,  and  dismissed  him 
with  the  command  to  make  a  ceremony  in  honor  of  the 
Thunderers  but  to  put  his  captor  in  a  place  of  distinction 
therein.  All  the  deities  came  the  following  year  and  gave 
Packs-antelope  detailed  ceremonial  instructions,  as  well  as 
the  Bird  bundle  with  the  correlated  chants.  The  proper 
performance  of  the  ritual  of  course  ensures  good  crops, 
plenty  of  game,  and  victory. 

Now,  obviously,  it  is  exclusively  the  circumstantial 
speeches  of  the  divine  visitants  telling  Packs-antelope  how 
to  paint  the  sacred  contents  of  the  bundle,  what  articles  to 
combine,  what  chants  to  sing,  that  in  any  real  sense  account 
for  the  Bird  ceremonial.  The  plot  of  the  familiar  story  ex¬ 
plains  nothing  in  the  ceremony  but  is  prefixed  to  the  essen¬ 
tial  part  of  the  explanation.  The  Hidatsa  might  just  as 
well  whittle  down  the  lengthy  narrative  to  a  report  of  the 
directions  supplied  to  the  founder.  But  this  is  looking  at  it 
from  the  outsider’s  point  of  view.  However  tenuous  may 
be  the  thread  connecting  tale  and  ritual,  the  owner  of  the 
bundle  regards  both  as  an  inseparable  unit  to  be  transmit¬ 
ted  only  as  the  prerogative  of  initiates ;  and  accordingly  the 
tale  of  the  Thunderbirds  and  the  water-monster  is  lifted  to 
a  level  of  esoteric  sanctity  by  its  association  with  the  cere¬ 
mony. 


29B  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

It  is  thus  possible  that  priestly  adaptation  can  convert  fic¬ 
tion  into  a  sacred  myth.  The  plot,  it  should  be  noted,  is 
sometimes  not  merely  found  in  non-ritualistic  setting  in 
other  tribes  but  may  appear  in  an  esoteric  and  an  exoteric 
form  within  the  same  group.  Thus,  the  Menomini  of  Wis¬ 
consin  tell  of  their  hero  Ma’nabus  and  explain  how  the  gods 
destroyed  his  brother  Wolf  by  dragging  him  below  the  ice. 
Turning  into  a  tree,  the  hero  shoots  two  of  the  slayers,  who 
flee  wounded  and  cause  a  deluge.  He  finds  safety  in  flight, 
and,  disguising  himself  in  a  flayed  old  woman’s  skin,  he  suc¬ 
ceeds  in  killing  his  wounded  enemies  and,  despite  a  second 
flood,  manages  to  escape.  However,  when  a  novice  is 
adopted  into  the  great  secret  society  of  the  tribe,  a  dif¬ 
ferent  twist  is  given  to  the  narrative:  the  hero  bulldozes 
the  gods  into  teaching  him  the  sacred  cult  as  a  peace-offer¬ 
ing.19 

In  the  cases  cited  the  ritualistic  association  rather  tends  to 
spoil  good  fiction  by  a  great  deal  of  prosy  recital  of  cere¬ 
monial  trivialities  (from  our  point  of  view).  This  esthet- 
ically  unfavorable  development,  however,  is  not  the  only 
possible  one.  As  Boas  has  indicated,  the  priest  may  act  as 
a  creative  artist  and  weld  into  a  unified  whole  the  hitherto 
disjointed  narratives  current  among  his  people.  That  such 
systematization  occurred  among  the  Polynesians,  has  al¬ 
ready  been  shown.  To  what  extent  such  intellectual  feats 
remain  on  the  plane  of  artistic  virtuosity  or  acquire  genu¬ 
inely  religious  value,  will  naturally  vary  in  different  cases,— 
nay,  possibly  even  for  different  individuals.29 

Enough  has  been  said  to  elucidate  the  character  of  the 
rationalistic  tendency  in  connection  with  ritual.  Its  spon¬ 
taneous  self -assertiveness  is  perhaps  most  amusingly  ex¬ 
hibited  when  the  zest  of  justification  makes  the  same  people 
offer  quite  distinct  reasons  for  the  same  behavior.  Thus,  in 


ASSOCIATION 


299 


the  Scalp  Ceremonial  of  the  Zuni  in  New  Mexico,  men  offer 
prayer-sticks  to  the  ants  as  well  as  to  the  war  gods.  A  triple 
motive  is  alleged:  the  ants  are  constantly  fighting;  they  help 
people  by  removing  their  tracks ;  they  make  many  people  at¬ 
tend  the  ceremony, — as  many  people  as  there  are  ants."1  Evi¬ 
dently,  any  and  every  path  of  association  can  be  used  as  a 
warrant  for  what  one  wants  to  do  or  is  used  to  doing.  This 
leads  us  to  our  next  topic. 

Secondary  Association  and  Growth  of  Ceremonial 

The  process  of  rationalization  forms  part  of  a  still  wider 
psychological  category,  that  of  secondary  association.  This 
is  best  explained  by  setting  it  over  against  its  opposite.  If 
an  individual  child  spontaneously  connects,  say,  the  number 
four  with  the  notion  of  benevolence  or  intimacy,  the  asso¬ 
ciation  may  be  illogical  but  it  is  psychologically  primary. 
Similarly,  when  an  artist  attempts  to  represent  a  specific  re¬ 
ligious  conception  in  a  given  technique,  the  association,  so 
far  as  the  finished  product  is  concerned,  must  be  reckoned 
primary.  For  though  the  concept  and  the  technique  can  and 
do  exist  separately,  this  particular  work  flows  directly  from 
and  is  primarily  determined  by  the  preexisting  idea.  This 
is  not  true  where,  as  in  Congolese  fetiches,  the  effigy  is  exe¬ 
cuted  independently  of  religious  motives  and  only  acquires 
sacred  character  by  subsequent  consecration.  Again,  if  the 
Eye-juggler  story  in  its  Navaho  version  really  sprang  from 
the  craving  for  a  causal  interpretation  of  the  coyote’s  eyes, 
we  should  have  a  primary  connection  of  plot  and  explana¬ 
tory  close. 

Thanks  to  Professor  Boas,  the  overshadowing  importance 
of  secondary  association  in  art,  in  ritual,  and  in  mythology 
is  no  longer  ignored.  Of  the  fact  of  its  constant  occurrence 


300 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


in  every  realm  of  culture  there  can  be  no  question,  and  the 
preceding  pages  furnish  abundant  illustrative  material,  for 
example,  in  the  sections  devoted  to  the  growth  of  the  Peyote 
and  the  Ghost  Dance  cults.  At  present  we  are  less  inter¬ 
ested  in  proving  what  has  been  amply  demonstrated  than  in 
offering  some  suggestions  as  to  why  specific  associations  de¬ 
velop  secondarily,  and  what  are  the  psychological  implica¬ 
tions  of  such  syncretism. 

Since  the  association  must  invariably  go  back  to  processes 
in  a  single  mind,  the  mental  operations  observed  will  nat¬ 
urally  be  those  described  in  textbooks  of  psychology,  even 
though  certain  social  determinants  must  be  taken  into  account 
if  the  phenomenon  is  to  be  described  in  its  totality. 

In  this  connection  may  be  cited  a  suggestive  instance  of 
ceremonial  borrowing.  Most  of  the  northern  Plains  tribes 
have  a  well-developed  series  of  military  associations,  which 
in  some  cases  are  almost  wholly  secular,  while  in  others  they 
clearly  bear  a  religious  character.  In  investigating  the  so¬ 
cieties  of  the  Oglala,  a  branch  of  the  Western  Dakota,  Dr. 
Wissler  discovered  that  according  to  native  tradition  the 
Badger  dance  society  was  modeled  on  its  Crow  namesake. 
This  statement  was  very  puzzling  to  me  since  no  such  per¬ 
formance  had  been  noted  among  the  Crow.  But  examination 
of  the  native  word  for  badger  showed  that  it  was  practically 
identical  with  the  Hidatsa  and  Crow  word  for  the  kit-fox, 
from  which  one  of  the  best-known  organizations  of  the  area 
gets  its  designation.  Comparison  of  the  regalia  and  modes 
of  ceremonial  organization  indicates  that  the  Oglala  bor¬ 
rowed  the  Kit-fox  dance  of  the  Hidatsa  or  Crow  and  naively 
interpreted  the  alien  name  as  though  it  were  a  vocable  of 
their  own  tongue.22 

Here,  then,  the  similarity  in  sound  between  two  words  of 
different  meaning  in  their  respective  vocabularies  led  to  the 


ASSOCIATION  2>oi 

association  of  the  name  “Badger”  with  a  combination  of  cere¬ 
monial  features  originally  linked  with  a  quite  distinct  name. 
This  association  in  turn  had  interesting  results,  for  from 
the  primitive  point  of  view  there  is  a  good  deal  in  a  name. 
The  borrowed  complex  was  ipso  facto  distinguished  from  an 
older  Dakota  dance  of  essentially  similar  nature,  and  still 
another  association  was  added :  the  members  were  exhorted 
to  imitate  their  eponym  in  putting  up  a  strenuous  fight !  One 
can  easily  conceive  additional  rationalizations  developing  in 
the  most  spontaneous  fashion :  how  some  Oglala  who  had 
forgotten  the  alien  derivation  of  the  dance  might  ascribe  its 
origin  to  a  revelation  granted  by  a  supernatural  badger,  how 
members  would  come  to  carry  badger  skins,  and  what  not. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  name  was  actually  interpreted  to 
refer  “to  the  characteristic  grimaces  and  growlings  of  the 
badger  when  attacked.” 

The  case  cited  suggests,  then,  a  ready  mode  for  the  elabo¬ 
ration  of  a  ceremonial  complex.  We  can  understand  why 
some  of  the  dozen  tribes  of  the  same  region  practicing  the 
Kit- fox  dance  should  wear  necklaces  of  the  animal’s  skin, 
why  some  should  put  on  headbands  set  with  kit- fox  jaws. 
There  is  a  similar  fitness  in  the  wearing  of  horned  buffalo- 
skin  headdresses  or  masks  by  the  Bull  dancers  of  the  area, 
in  their  imitating  buffalo  in  their  sounds  and  movements; 
and  again  it  is  obvious  why  the  Mosquito  society  of  the 
Black  foot  should  buzz  and  scratch.  The  association  is  not 
only  one  that  may  automatically  arise  in  an  individual  mem¬ 
ber’s  mind  by  the  principles  of  similarity  and  contiguity  but 
will  commend  itself  to  his  fellow-members  by  its  simplicity 
and  plausibility  even  if  he  should  not  happen  to  exeicise  any 

unusual  influence. 

An  irrational  juxtaposition  can  be  quite  as  effective  in 
welding  disparate  features  into  a  firm  unit.  I  am  not  al- 


302 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


luding  here  to  such  cases  as  the  union  of  maize  and  the  wild 
geese  by  the  Hidatsa  Goose  association,  for  here  the  com¬ 
mon  relationship  to  a  deity  they  both  symbolize  adequately 
accounts  for  the  phenomenon.  I  am  referring  rather  to  the 
strange  hodgepodge  of  songs,  material  objects,  and  prac¬ 
tices  that  are  associated  with  the  typical  American  Indian 
medicine-bundle.  Wherever  the  vision  concept  is  conspicu¬ 
ous,  as  among  the  Crow,  the  integration  is  easily  effected 
through  its  instrumentality.  For  example,  between  the 
sacred  Tobacco  planted  by  the  Crow  and  the  strawberry  there 
is  no  logical  relation:  but  the  two  became  connected  be¬ 
cause  Medicine-crow,  a  member  of  the  Tobacco  society, 
saw  the  Tobacco  in  human  form  wearing  crowns  of  straw¬ 
berries. 

Again,  the  Menomini  of  Wisconsin  have  an  official  theory 
to  the  effect  that  their  composite  bundles  are  each  the  in¬ 
divisible  gift  of  a  benevolent  deity.  But  Mr.  Skinner  has 
rendered  it  at  least  highly  probable  that  the  observed  com¬ 
plexity  is  the  result  of  secondary  association,  and  he  has 
shown  how  this  can  quite  naturally  come  about.  A  little 
boy,  on  the  assumption  of  a  mystic  bond  with  the  Thunder, 
often  receives  from  his  parents  a  small  club  as  a  symbol  of 
that  tie;  when  he  fasts  for  a  vision  at  puberty,  additional 
charms  may  be  prescribed  by  his  guardian  spirit,  and  still 
others  can  be  acquired  in  later  life.  “What  is  to  hinder  these 
various  charms,  when  they  become  too  numerous  for  con¬ 
venience  in  carrying,  from  being  made  into  one  large  package 
or  bundle  combining  the  power  of  all  ?”  Such  piecemeal  ac¬ 
cretion  through  a  sequence  of  revelations  is  admitted  by  the 
Sauk  and  Fox,  neighbors  and  fellow-Algonkians  of  the 
Menomini.  Nay,  among  the  latter  themselves  Mr.  Skinner 
once  bought  the  mingled  remains  of  what  had  been  three  dis¬ 
tinct  bundles.  The  contents  had  become  mixed  by  accident, 


ASSOCIATION 


303 

and  since  nice  assortment  was  impracticable  the  whole  was 
preserved  as  a  unit. 

If  the  bundle  had  been  handed  down  for  several  generations 
more,  until  the  accident  of  the  confusion  had  been  forgotten, 
who  can  doubt  but  that  its  final  owner  would  have  looked  upon 
it  as  a  universal  bundle  of  great  power?  And  what  more  nat¬ 
ural  than  to  ascribe  its  origin,  as  a  whole,  to  one  of  the  great 
beneficent  powers,  Ma’nabus,  for  instance  ? 23 

In  other  words,  by  the  legerdemain  of  a  rationalizing  ori¬ 
gin  myth  elements  of  the  utmost  heterogeneity  can  be  welded 
into  an  inseparable  whole. 

Such  a  secondary  combination  of  originally  disparate  fea¬ 
tures  is  particularly  likely  where  the  idea  holds  sway  that  a 
given  ceremonial  prerogative  can  be  bought  and  sold.  Ac¬ 
cording  to  Maximilian  Prince  of  Wied-Neuwied,  the  Hi- 
datsa  Stone  Hammer  organization  purchased  the  Hot  Dance 
from  a  neighboring  tribe,  the  Arikara.  Now  the  Stone 
Hammers  formed  a  group  of  young  men  carrying  lances 
stuck  through  a  perforated  stone  bearing  designs  emblematic 
of  celestial  beings;  they  were  expected  to  be  brave  in  battle 
and  were  licensed  to  steal  food  from  their  fellow-tribesmen, 
— if  not  caught.  The  Hot  Dance,  on  the  other  hand,  has 
for  its  most  characteristic  feature  the  trick  of  thrusting  one’s 
bare  arm  into  a  kettle  of  boiling  water.24  Thus,  a  purely  ex¬ 
ternal  bond  came  to  unite  two  separate  groups  of  ideas  and 
activities,  which  nevertheless  might  in  course  of  time  have 
fused  inextricably  and  been  combined  through  the  rationaliz¬ 
ing  process. 

Under  certain  conditions  secondary  association  is  the  re¬ 
sult  of  substitution.  It  is  quite  true  that  the  primitive  mind 
in  general  resents  a  departure  from  the  traditional  norm, 
but  even  among  so  conservative  a  people  as  the  Polynesians 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


304 

the  overshadowing  influence  of  a  strong  will-power  in  a 
man  of  authority  was  shown  capable  of  wiping  out  a  cus¬ 
tom  of  hoary  antiquity;  and  in  the  Plains  the  vision  of  a 
leader  was  sufficient  sanction  for  a  change  in  routine.  How¬ 
ever,  I  am  not  so  much  concerned  now  to  illustrate  substitu¬ 
tions  due  to  great  prestige  as  rather  the  changes  inevitably 
arising  through  novel  conditions.  Assuredly  there  is  a 
healthy  preference  for  the  good  old  way,  but  even  where  de¬ 
parture  from  it  appears  a  venturesome  enterprise  the  con¬ 
flict,  whether  to  perform  with  some  modification  or  not  at 
all,  will  often  be  decided  in  favor  of  the  former  alternative. 
Thus,  in  the  summer  of  1916  I  witnessed  the  Hopi  of  Oraibi 
village  perform  the  Snake  Dance  without  any  of  the  Ante¬ 
lope  priests  traditionally  expected  to  go  through  certain  ac¬ 
tivities.  A  schism  dividing  the  villagers  had  left  the  vic¬ 
torious  party  in  possession  of  their  habitations  but  without 
one  of  the  two  sacred  brotherhoods  that  ought  to  cooperate 
in  the  ceremony:  accordingly,  some  of  the  Snake  priests 
took  over  functions  not  “properly”  belonging  to  them.  The 
case  is  doubtless  typical  of  much  ritualistic  history.  A  still 
more  instructive  example  has  been  discussed  by  Dr.  Spier. 
Among  the  Arapaho  a  “flat-pipe”  represents  the  most  highly 
venerated  object,  and  its  keeper  naturally  acts  as  the  master 
of  ceremonies  in  the  Sun  Dance.  But  in  the  Oklahoma 
branch  of  this  people  the  tribal  palladium  was  lacking,  and 
a  sacred  wheel,  such  as  played  only  a  subordinate  part  in 
Wyoming,  rose  to  ascendancy  and  “acquired  an  enhanced 
value,  until  it  is  to-day,  in  the  eyes  of  the  southern  Arapaho , 
next  to  the  tribal  pipe  the  most  sacred  possession  of  the 
tribe.”  25 

As  an  accompaniment  of  diffusion  secondary  associations 
may  develop  not  only  without  arousing  antagonism  but  even 
without  entering  consciousness.  A  tribe  borrowing  an  alien 


ASSOCIATION 


305  ' 


dance  does  not  and  cannot  copy  it  with  photographic  exact¬ 
ness.  For  one  thing,  the  learners  may  not  have  been  ini¬ 
tiated  into  the  esoteric  or  subjective  aspects  of  the  perform¬ 
ance.  For  another,  even  if  they  were,  certain  features  could 
not  possibly  be  transplanted.  Thus,  the  Plains  Indian  tribes 
have  in  part  military  societies  graded  in  a  series,  in  part  co- 
ordinate  societies  of  otherwise  similar  character.  But  if  a 
people  lacking  the  hierarchical  grading  patterned  a  rite  no 
matter  how  closely  upon  that  performed  by  one  of  the  graded 
associations,  essential  elements  would  have  to  be  omitted,  to 
wit,  the  relations  of  the  society  to  its  neighboring  grades. 
But  what  is  true  negatively  also  holds  in  a  positive  way :  a 
native  observer  not  merely  eliminates  what  he  cannot  assimi¬ 
late,  he  also  amplifies  what  he  borrows  in  harmony  with  his 
received  notions  of  ritualistic  propriety,  never  dreaming  per¬ 
haps  that  he  is  adding  to  the  borrowed  feature  something 
alien  to  the  borrowers,  nay,  conceivably  militating  against 
their  ceremonial  ideals.  Thus,  the  military  societies  of  the 
Hidatsa  and  Mandan  were  all  entered  by  purchase  of  mem¬ 
bership  rights.  Hence  if  any  addition  was  to  be  made  to 
the  system,  it  was  possible  only  by  making  purchase  a  sine 
qua  non:  a  dance  borrowed  from,  say,  the  Crow,  where  no 
such  idea  was  in  vogue  for  performances  of  this  category, 
was  perforce  altered  by  a  sort  of  analogic  leveling  to  the 
Hidatsa  pattern. 

Now  it  is  a  significant  observation  that  the  ritualistic  pat¬ 
tern  of  a  tribe  may  embrace  not  merely  the  characteristics  of 
observances  but  the  very  purposes  for  which  the  ceremonial 
is  performed ;  or,  to  be  more  precise,  for  which  it  is  avowedly 
performed.  Thus,  the  Arapaho  have  eight  major  cere¬ 
monies,  each  and  every  one  of  which  is  initiated  only  as  the 
result  of  a  pledge  made  to  avert  danger  or  death.  In  short, 
because  of  the  standardization  of  rationalizing  about  cere- 


r 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


306 

monial  aims,  ceremonial  activity  has  become  firmly  linked 
with  one  particular  type  of  explanation.  The  inevitable  con¬ 
sequence  will  be  that  when  any  new  set  of  comparable  ob¬ 
servances  is  introduced  its  rationalization  will  follow  the 
path  of  least  resistance,  that  is,  will  fall  into  the  accustomed 
groove.  In  principle,  this  of  course  exactly  parallels  the 
etiological  pattern  characteristic  of  the  region,  the  inclina¬ 
tion,  so  often  emphasized  above,  to  derive  anything  and 
everything  from  a  visionary  experience.  When  my  Hidatsa 
informants  did  not  know  of  a  vision-myth  to  account  for  a 
given  ritual,  they  quite  automatically  inferred  that  the  cere¬ 
mony  was  not  of  native  origin.  I  encountered  an  instruc¬ 
tive  case  among  the  Crow.  These  people  had  within  recent 
times  adopted  a  Pipe  ritual  from  the  Hidatsa  and  had  dis¬ 
covered  that  the  sister  tribe  lacked  the  Crow  Tobacco  cere¬ 
mony.  These  facts  were  introduced  into  the  legend  account¬ 
ing  for  the  separation  of  the  two  groups  by  the  assumption 
that  when  the  division  occurred  the  founder  of  the  Crow 
tribe  was  blessed  with  a  revelation  of  the  Tobacco,  the 
founder  of  the  Hidatsa  tribe  with  that  of  the  sacred  Pipe. 
The  assurance  with  which  this  rationalization  was  advanced 
is  rather  amusing  because  the  Hidatsa  themselves,  far  from 
claiming  authorship  of  the  Pipe  ritual,  say  that  they  ob¬ 
tained  it  from  the  Arikara.  That  was  a  possibility  the  Crow 
rationalizer  had  not  considered :  his  craving  for  a  causal  ex¬ 
planation  for  certain  differences  in  religious  behavior  between 
two  branches  of  a  once  undivided  people  was  adequately  sat¬ 
isfied  when  he  had  applied  the  approved  formula. 

Can  we  define  the  phenomena  described  above  in  more 
definitely  psychological  terms  ?  Always  with  the  under¬ 
standing  that  an  association  occurring  in  the  individual 
psyche  does  not  forthwith  become  a  cultural  fact  but  can 
only  be  converted  into  one  where  the  relations  of  the  individ- 


ASSOCIATION 


307 


ual  mind  to  its  social  environment  are  favorable,  we  can 
proceed  to  an  analysis  of  the  initial  association.  To  take 
a  concrete  example,  all  the  Arapaho  military  organizations 
performed  ceremonies  to  ward  off  danger,  but  some  of  these 
are  demonstrably  of  alien  origin.  Now  what  happened  when 
one  of  these  foreign  ceremonial  complexes  was  adopted  into 
the  Arapaho  scheme  ?  There  was  evidently  what  psycholo¬ 
gists  generally  call  association  by  similarity  and  contiguity : 
the  complex  was  at  once  put  into  the  same  category  as  cer¬ 
tain  well-established  ceremonies  and  whatever  general  fea¬ 
tures  were  linked  with  these  were  thus  automatically  joined 
to  the  newcomer.  This  implies  a  partial  blindness — doubt¬ 
less  only  in  the  rarest  cases  a  willful  blindness — as  to  the 
phenomenon  assimilated.  Attention  is  concentrated  on  like¬ 
ness  to  familiar  performances,  specific  differences  are  of 
course  noticed  but  merely  as  constituting  a  pleasing  variation 
in  detail :  the  new  ceremony  is  merely  a  novel  embodiment 
of  the  current  “idea”  of  ceremonialism  in  a  Platonic  sense. 
Hence  there  is  what  Professor  Woodworth  has  called  the 
“response  by  analogy,”  based  on  the  neglect  of  everything 
in  the  borrowed  elements  that  cannot  be  forthwith  adapted 
to  the  norm. 

Now  the  perception  of  such  similarity  provides  the  cue  for 
secondary  association  in  many  circumstances  that  do  not  in¬ 
volve  contact  of  separate  groups;  and  here  lies  in  my  opinion 
one  of  the  most  effective  instrumentalities  for  the  elabora¬ 
tion  of  ceremonial  routine.  This  may  be  illustrated  by  a 
series  of  otherwise  widely  divergent  cases. 

It  was  a  rule  among  the  Hidatsa  that  in  the  collective  pur¬ 
chase  of  membership  in  a  military  society  each  purchaser 
should  selebt  an  individual  “father”  who  was  to  be  feasted 
and  presented  with  special  gifts  during  the  period  of  pre¬ 
liminary  instruction;  and  this  “father”  was  chosen  from 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


3°8 

among  the  kinsmen  of  the  novice’s  real  father.  Why  this 
connection  between  acquiring  a  particular  group  of  cere¬ 
monial  rights  and  the  special  favoring  of  patrilineal  rela¬ 
tives?  For  the  simple  reason  that,  quite  apart  from  any 
ritualistic  activity,  these  paternal  kinsfolk  were  according  to 
Hidatsa  (as  well  as  Crow)  usage  preeminently  those  tribes¬ 
men  whom  it  was  proper  to  honor,  entertain,  and  present 
with  gifts  when  a  warrior  returned  with  booty.  When, 
therefore,  a  Hidatsa  found  himself  in  a  situation  in  which 
entertainment  and  donations  were  called  for,  he  naturally 
singled  out  for  such  differential  treatment  some  one  who  in 
the  normal  events  of  life  would  be  so  distinguished.  The 
bond  between  a  particular  military  society  complex  and  the 
honoring  of  the  father’s  kinsman  was  a  wholly  adventitious 
one:  the  situation,  however,  happened  to  furnish  the  cue 
for  a  typical  response  by  analogy. 

Let  us  change  the  scene  and  revert  to  the  Papuan  initia¬ 
tion  festivals  described  in  an  earlier  chapter.  How  comes  it 
that  a  performance  purporting  to  admit  youths  to  the  ad¬ 
vantages  of  full-fledged  citizenship  and  to  strike  terror  into 
the  hearts  of  the  women  should  be  combined,  of  all  things, 
with  a  pig-market?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  more  than 
one  tertium  quid  comparationis.  Pigs  are  fattened  in  any 
event  for  the  initiation  feast,  hence  why  not  sell  some  of 
them  and  draw  profit  as  well  as  amusement  and  edification 
from  the  affair?  Again,  initiation  is  an  occasion  that  unites 
all  neighboring  tribes,  and  the  same  holds  for  a  market; 
what  then  more  natural  than  to  hit  two  birds  with  one 
stone?  The  apparently  strange  association  of  athletic  games 
with  the  most  sacred  Polynesian  festivals  is  probably  amena¬ 
ble  to  an  analogous  explanation. 

It  should  never  be  forgotten  that  when  a  feature  is  thus 
brought  into  a  new  context  it  may  thereby  assume  a  charac- 


ASSOCIATION 


309 


ter  very  different  from  that  borne  in  isolation.  For  exam¬ 
ple,  the  games  played  by  some  Plains  Indian  tribes  in  the 
Ghost  Dance  became  holy  not  because  they  were  such  in 
themselves  but  because  they  suggested  and  symbolized  the 
old  life  that  had  become  hallowed  in  the  reaction  against 
Caucasian  aggressiveness. 

In  North  America,  where  information  is  relatively  ample, 
the  growth  of  elaborate  festivals  by  successive  accretion 
through  response  by  analogy  can  often  be  traced  step  by 
step.  Thus,  there  is  no  logical  connection  between  initiation 
into  a  society  devoting  itself  to  the  planting  of  sacred  To¬ 
bacco  and  the  formal  recital  of  an  individual  brave’s  war 
record;  yet  when  an  adoption  occurs  among  the  Crow,  the 
entrance  into  the  lodge  is  uniformly  preceded  by  such  a  nar¬ 
rative.  “The  reason  is  fairly  clear.  At  every  festive  gath¬ 
ering  of  the  Crow  there  is  a  recital  of  war  deeds;  the  To¬ 
bacco  initiation  produces  such  a  gathering,  which  elicits  the 
customary  concomitant ;  and  thus  the  coup-recital  becomes  a 
feature  of  the  Tobacco  adoption  ceremony.” 

The  at  first  bewildering  complexity  of,  say,  the  Sun  Dance 
becomes  intelligible  when  we  apply  this  principle  of  interpre¬ 
tation,  as  has  been  done  by  Dr.  Spier,26  whose  examples  can 
easily  be  multiplied.  Thus,  at  a  certain  stage  in  the  Crow 
performance  distinguished  young  men  point  sharpened  poles 
at  the  cooks  of  the  buffalo  tongues  prepared  during  the  fes¬ 
tival.  This  is  obviously  because  of  the  license  widely  granted 
to  braves  on  the  Plains  of  appropriating  whatever  food  took 
their  fancy.  The  interminable  recital  of  war  exploits  at 
various  stages  of  the  Crow  and  Dakota  ceremonies  simply 
represents  the  usual  procedure  on  a  public  occasion.  If  the 
first  tree  felled  for  the  dance  structure  is  shot  at  and  formally 
struck  by  the  bystanders,  nothing  is  more  obvious  consider¬ 
ing  that  it  symbolizes  the  enemy,  hence  evokes  the  traditional 


3io 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


formal  charge.  The  Arapaho  share  with  a  few  other  tribes 
the  notion  that  a  ceremonial  superior  may  be  conciliated  by 
the  surrender  of  one’s  wife,  and  since  the  typical  relation¬ 
ship  of  ceremonial  hierarchy  obtains  between  the  Sun  Dance 
pledger  and  his  “grandfather”  the  offering  is  made  in  this 
connection  also.  As  Spier  clearly  shows,  such  amplification 
implies  merely  a  greater  or  lesser  drawing  on  the  tribal  stock 
of  procedure,  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  understand  why  inno¬ 
vation  along  such  familiar  lines  does  not  evoke  resentment 
but  is  readily  converted  from  the  momentary  promptings  of 
a  cue  supplied  to  an  individual  mind  into  a  part  of  the  estab¬ 
lished  procedure.  Why  should  any  one  voice  objections  if  a 
pipe  hitherto  handled  in  silence  at  a  certain  stage  is  suddenly 
offered  with  traditional  prayers  to  the  Four  Quarters?  And 
if  four  is  the  mystic  number,  what  limit  is  there  to  the  un¬ 
opposed  quadrupling — and  consequent  impressive  lengthen¬ 
ing — of  any  integral  feature? 

The  processes  of  association  are  of  course  the  same  when 
no  particular  behavior  is  involved,  when  we  are  dealing  with 
the  elaboration  not  of  ceremonial  but  of  mythical  concepts. 
So  many  illustrations  are  provided  by  the  material  cited  in 
this  book  that  a  case  or  two  will  suffice  for  explicit  discus¬ 
sion.  To  take  a  hackneyed  instance,  as  soon  as  a  being  as¬ 
sociated  with  a  natural  phenomenon,  say,  the  sun  or  sky,  or 
a  wind,  is  clearly  envisaged  as  possessing  human  character¬ 
istics,  even  though  in  magnified  form,  there  will  naturally 
arise  through  association  a  tendency  to  ascribe  to  him  an¬ 
thropomorphic  traits.  That  is  why,  even  according  to  Mr. 
Man’s  report,  the  Andamanese  god  Puluga  (Biliku)  eats, 
drinks,  sleeps,  and  begets  children.  Similarly,  it  is  not  dif¬ 
ficult  to  understand  why  the  ancient  Egyptians  evolved  di¬ 
vinities  in  triads  of  father,  mother,  and  son.  In  some  of 
the  visionary  experiences  recorded  among  the  Crow  the 


ASSOCIATION 


3ii 

mental  operations  are  quite  transparent.  Lone-tree’s  identifi¬ 
cation  of  the  Dipper  by  the  seven  stars  in  his  queue  has  al¬ 
ready  been  described.  Again,  an  old  man  is  represented  as 
being  visited  by  four  men  and  since  each  has  a  star  in  front 
of  him  he  knows  that  it  is  the  stars  that  are  blessing  him. 
But  while  the  first  man  sings  four  songs,  the  others  merely 
sing  one  apiece.  “This  made  seven  songs  in  all,  accordingly 
the  visionary  believed  these  men  were  the  Dipper.” 

It  is  of  course  artificial  to  separate  ideation  and  behavior. 
The  way  in  which  they  are  always  potentially  interdependent 
is  seen  in  the  last  case  when  the  visionary  in  conformity  with 
his  revelation  unites  seven  persons  for  a  joint  ritualistic 
enterprise.27 

A  somewhat  perplexing  category  of  associations,  both  in 
myth  and  in  ritual,  rests  on  the  principle  of  antithesis  rather 
than  similarity.  It  is  clear  from  an  inspection  of  the  evi¬ 
dence  from  individual  psychology  that  different  ideas  have  a 
very  unequal  power  of  evoking  their  opposites  :  for  instance, 
of  Kent  and  Rosanoff’s  subjects  only  37  responded  “high” 
to  stimulus  “deep,”  while  fully  365  coupled  “hard”  with 
“soft.”  In  other  words,  whatever  individual  differences 
may  exist  in  this  respect  are  shrouded  by  other  effective 
causes.  It  is  thus  anything  but  easy  to  work  backwards 
from  an  empirically  noted  linkage  of  contraries  to  the  con¬ 
ditions  favoring  such  a  result.  Nevertheless  some  observa¬ 
tions  may  be  made  that  are  not  wholly  futile. 

In  the  first  place,  it  may  be  possible  to  show  that  the  an¬ 
tithesis  is  more  apparent  than  real.  For  instance,  some 
writers  have  been  puzzled  by  the  dual  personality  of  a  cre¬ 
ator  or  hero,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Crow  Indians’  Old-Man- 
Coyote.  I  have  already  expressed  the  opinion  that  if  the 
creator  were  really  conceived  as  a  definitely  ethical  personal¬ 
ity  such  extravaganzas  of  unsocial  conduct  as  are  constantly 


312  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

ascribed  to  him  are  not  intelligible,  whatever  allowances  may 
be  made  for  primitive  inconsistency.  But  Professor  Boas 
has  solved  many  cases  of  this  sort  by  demonstrating  that  the 
creator’s  or  hero’s  feats  are  not,  as  our  preconceptions  impel 
us  to  believe,  prompted  by  altruism  at  all. 

Even  in  his  heroic  achievements  he  remains  a  trickster  bent 
upon  the  satisfaction  of  his  own  desires.  ...  He  liberates  the 
sun,  not  because  he  pities  mankind,  but  because  he  desires  it ; 
and  the  first  use  he  tries  to  make  of  it  is  to  compel  fishermen  to 
give  him  part  of  their  catch.  He  gets  the  fresh  water  because 
he  is  thirsty,  and  unwillingly  spills  it  all  over  the  world  while  he 
is  making  his  escape.  He  liberates  the  fish  because  he  is  hungry, 
and  gets  the  tides  in  order  to  be  able  to  gather  shell-fish.28 

More  difficult  are  those  instances  in  which  a  sacred  rite  is 
combined  with  an  exhibition  of  buffoonery,  obscenity,  or  at 
least  with  what  seems  a  logically  inconsistent  exhibition  of 
levity.  Wundt  has  expressed  the  theory  that  burlesque  fol¬ 
lows  in  the  wake  of  solemnity.  He  is  willing  to  concede 
that  this  transition  is  very  old;  indeed,  he  contends  that  it 
is  found  among  all  peoples  in  no  matter  how  rude  a  state 
of  culture.  Two  psychological  factors  are  said  to  produce 
the  transformation.  On  the  one  hand,  the  sacred  perform¬ 
ance  from  the  very  start  harbored  an  element  of  pleasure 
inseparable  from  song  and  dance ;  and  this  secular  feature  is 
strengthened  as  the  primary  religious  motive  fades  away. 
But,  secondly,  since  this  does  not  wholly  vanish,  the  feeling 
of  pleasure  is  accentuated  by  the  sense  of  contrast.  He  gives 
as  an  example  that  of  the  once  awe-inspiring  mask,  which  be¬ 
comes  comical  as  the  belief  in  its  supernatural  potency  wanes. 
When  the  mummer  removes  his  mask  and  distorts  his  own 
features  into  a  grimace,  the  humorous  effect  is  enhanced  be¬ 
cause  this  action  dispels  whatever  fear  may  linger  in  connee- 


ASSOCIATION 


3I3 

tion  with  the  false  face.  To  this  antithesis  of  dread  and  re¬ 
laxation  a  second  feeling  of  contrast  is  added,  viz.,  that  be¬ 
tween  the  real  human  face  and  its  imitation.  Thus,  from 
Wundt’s  point  of  view  the  comic,  however  widespread  and 
ancient,  is  a  derivative  phenemenon  that  invariably  presup¬ 
poses  the  serious  since  it  implies  the  inversion  of  a  preceding 
serious  impression.  a 

It  is  quite  possible  to  accept  the  theory  that  the  comic 
rests  on  a  feeling  of  contrast  without  admitting  the  special 
conclusion  that  burlesque  is  invariably  the  outgrowth  of  a 
sacred  rite.  An  Andamanese  shaman  known  by  Professor 
Brown  performed  a  pantomimic  dance  patterned  on  what  he 
had  seen  when  on  a  visit  to  the  world  of  spirits.  The  kind 
of  thing  he  did  that  aroused  great  amusement  among  the 
spectators  was  to  feign  having  hurt  his  leg  by  violent  danc¬ 
ing  or  to  imitate  the  step  of  the  women’s  dance.30  The  hu¬ 
mor  of  the  situation  clearly  consists  not  in  the  degradation 
of  a  lofty  effect  but  in  the  transparent  contrast  of  reality 
and  pretense.  So  in  a  Hopi  dance  I  have  witnessed  the  spec¬ 
tators  bursting  into  derisive  shouts  when  a  woman  attempted 
to  shoot  an  arrow :  between  archery  and  the  feminine  sex 
there  is  an  incongruity  in  the  native  mind,  and  the  real  or 
assumed  awkwardness  of  the  female  archer  precipitates 
laughter.  It  may  of  course  be  said  that  the  real  act  of  shoot¬ 
ing  is  serious  business,  which  suffers  degradation  by  mock- 
practice.  But  that  is  very  different  from  deriving  the  buf¬ 
foonery  appearing  in  ritual  from  the  serious  element  in  ritual 
by  an  inherent  process  of  transformation.  Wundt  ignores 
the  possibility  that  the  humorous  element,  while  of  course 
inseparable  from  human  life  as  a  whole,  may  very  well  ap¬ 
pear  unconnected  with  any  religious  ceremony.  The  question, 
then,  for  us  is  not  how  the  comic  may  arise  from  the  sacred, 
but  why  drollery  such  as  figures  in  the  non-ceremonial  life 


3H 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


of  the  people  may  be  injected  into  situations  of  such  solem¬ 
nity  as  apparently  to  preclude  such  secondary  association. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  describe  one  concrete  exam¬ 
ple  of  such  non-ceremonial  comic  performances.  Among  the 
Crow  Indians  the  clowns  are  not  permanently  organized  but 
appear  when  the  people  are  assembled  in  large  numbers, — 
in  recent  times  during  the  Fourth  of  July  festivities.  They 
not  only  make  themselves  unrecognizable,  wearing  a  black¬ 
ened  mask,  but  affect  the  acme  of  ugliness  in  their  appear¬ 
ance;  for  instance,  mud  is  used  in  place  of  body-paint,  their 
musician  beats  a  torn  drum,  their  horse  is  the  most  crooked¬ 
legged  and  swollen-kneed  in  camp.  They  walk  as  if  lame, 
and  their  feigned  clumsiness  of  movement  precipitates  gen¬ 
eral  mirth.  One  of  their  number  dresses  like  a  woman,  and 
his  clothes  are  stuffed  so  as  to  simulate  pregnancy;  this 
clown  rides  double  with  “her  husband.”  All  kinds  of  buf¬ 
foonery  are  perpetrated :  the  actors  mock  people  in  the  audi¬ 
ence  irrespective  of  their  distinction;  they  dance  as  ridicu¬ 
lously  as  possible ;  and  the  horseman  in  mounting  purposely 
overleaps  so  as  to  fall,  whereupon  he  acts  as  if  seriously  in¬ 
jured;  and  in  answering  questions  as  to  their  home  the 
clowns  may  indicate  that  they  have  journeyed  for  hundreds 
of  days  to  get  to  the  camp.  In  addition,  there  was  formerly 
a  pantomimic  representation  of  sexual  intercourse  by  “hus¬ 
band”  and  “wife.”  31 

A  personal  observation  may  help  to  elucidate  our  general 
psychological  problem.  In  1911  a  group  of  these  clowns 
rode  up  to  the  dance  house,  where  the  Hot  Dance  was  being 
performed,  dismounted,  and  to  the  amusement  of  all  specta¬ 
tors  joined  in  the  dance.  Now  this  intrusion,  though  possi¬ 
bly  it  had  never  occurred  before,  is  in  no  sense  enigmatic. 
For  the  Hot  Dance  had  long  lost  among  the  Crow  whatever 
religious  significance  it  once  had,  so  that  the  clowns  were 


ASSOCIATION 


3i5 

merely  adding  a  special  feature  to  the  amusement  program. 
But  further,  granting  that  the  idea  of  playing  the  clown  had 
occurred  at  this  particular  time,  nothing  was  more  natural 
than  that  the  clowns  should  proceed  to  the  dance  house, 
where  most  of  their  prospective  audience  were  gathered. 

It  is  otherwise  when  such  clownishness  is  coupled  with  be¬ 
havior  of  the  utmost  solemnity,  and  then  we  are  confronted 
by  the  problem  under  discussion.  This  does  not  happen  to 
occur  in  representative  form  among  the  Crow,  but  examples 
from  elsewhere  abound.  Whether  the  Maidu  of  the  Sacra¬ 
mento  Valley  in  central  California  are  holding  a  spiritistic 
meeting  or  celebrating  one  of  their  ceremonial  dances,  the 
clown  has  a  part  officially  not  less  recognized  than  the  sha¬ 
man’s.  He  apes  the  shaman’s  actions  and  speeches,  tries  to 
make  his  audience  laugh,  and  g'ives  an  exhibition  of  gluttony 
only  checked  with  great  difficulty  by  the  shaman’s  reproaches. 
This  character  is  strongly  reminiscent  of  certain  function¬ 
aries  in  the  ritual  of  the  Pueblo  tribes  of  Arizona  and 
New  Mexico.  I  have  myself  seen  clowns  of  the  Tewa 
village  on  the  First  Hopi  Mesa  entertaining  spec¬ 
tators  by  their  voracity,  practical  joking,  and  every  other 
kind  of  farcical  action  while  a  serious  masquerade  dance 
was  going  on,  and  even  mimicking  the  priests  in  asperging 
the  mummers  with  corn  meal.  But  perhaps  the  most  in¬ 
structive  data  are  supplied  by  the  Zuni  of  New  Mexico',  and 
a  brief  description  of  the  relevant  data  seems  desirable. 

All  Zuni  males  enter  a  rain-making  and  mask-wearing  so¬ 
ciety,  which  is  ceremonially  distinct  from  a  series  of  medical 
and  magical  associations  admitting  both  sexes  and  without 
compulsory  membership.  Buffoonery  is  intimately  con¬ 
nected  with  both  types  of  religious  activity.  During  the 
public  performances  of  the  Masked  Dancers  appear  a  group 
of  annually  chosen  clowns,  the  Koyemshi,  who  mimic  the 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


316 

celebrants,  deride  one  another’s  appearance,  indulge  in  ob¬ 
scene  raillery,  play  games,  pretend  being  frightened  at  some 
child  in  the  crowd,  fall  to  loggerheads  with  one  of  the  fra¬ 
ternities,  and  otherwise  seek  to  amuse  the  spectators.  Not¬ 
withstanding  their  distinctness  from  the  Koyemshi  in 
point  of  organization,  the  doctoring  fraternity  known  as 
Newekwe  (Galaxy)  is  often  connected  with  the  Koyemshi 
in  public  pleasantries.  This  association  is  plausible  enough 
considering  the  comic  pantomime  correlated  with  both 
groups.  The  Newekwe,  however,  have  as  a  distinctive  fea¬ 
ture  obligatory  eating  of  filth,  members  vying  with  one  an¬ 
other  as  to  the  amount  consumed.  This  is  only  one  of  a 
series  of  equally  repulsive  actions,  from  our  point  of  view, 
such  as  the  drinking  of  urine  and  the  biting  off  of  the  heads 
of  living  mice.  Nevertheless,  this  same  organization  prac¬ 
tices  the  typical  rituals  of  other  sacred  fraternities,  erects 
an  altar,  indulges  in  ceremonial  smoking,  and  constructs 
prayer  plumes.32 

Among  the  Plains  Indians  the  contrast  is  of  a  rather  dif¬ 
ferent  kind.  Thus,  in  the  Crazy  Dance  of  the  Arapaho  the 
performers  “act  in  as  extravagant  and  foolish  a  manner  as 
possible,  and  are  allowed  full  license  to  do  whatever  they 
please” :  they  annoy  every  one  in  camp,  some  impersonate 
animals  which  their  comrades  shoot  at,  aiming  backward 
over  their  shoulders;  indeed,  all  do  directly  the  opposite  of 
what  would  be  expected  from  a  rational  being.  Thus,  if  a 
dancer  is  carrying  a  heavy  load  he  pretends  that  it  is  negli¬ 
gible,  while  a  light  one  is  treated  as  though  it  were  a  ter¬ 
rible  burden;  and  all  members  “talk  backward,”  that  is, 
say  exactly  the  opposite  of  what  they  mean.  Further,  the 
Crazy  Dancers  rush  into  a  fire  specially  built  for  the  purpose 
and  trample  it  out.  They  have  a  root  possessing  the  virtue 
of  paralyzing  man  and  beast :  using  it  against  a  rattlesnake, 


ASSOCIATION 


3*7 


for  example,  they  can  make  him  unable  to  coil.33  These 
features  recur  in  varying  combinations  among  many  tribes 
of  the  same  region,  as  a  few  examples  will  amply  demon¬ 
strate.  The  Crow  had  “Crazy  Dogs”  who  said  the  reverse 
of  what  they  meant  and  were  pledged  to  foolhardiness  in  bat¬ 
tle.  In  the  Dog  society  of  the  Hidatsa  the  officers  distin¬ 
guished  from  the  rank  and  file  as  “Real  Dogs”  also  used 
backward  speech,  were  expected  to  be  particularly  brave, 
and  acted  contrary-  to  normal  ways,  for  instance,  by  walking 
about  practically  naked  in  the  winter  time.  They  also  took 
out  meat  from  a  kettle  of  boiling  water  without  injury  to 
their  arms  or  hands.  This  last-mentioned  trick  was  in  the 
highest  degree  characteristic  of  the  Heyoka  organization  of 
the  Dakota,  whose  general  motto  was  to  defy  natural  con¬ 
duct  and  normal  custom.  They  would  pretend  to  be  cold 
in  summer  and  hot  in  winter,  would  assist  women  in  cook¬ 
ing,  might  face  west  instead  of  east  in  a  Sun  Dance,  and  al¬ 
together  played  the  part  of  buffoons.  Nevertheless,  the  so¬ 
ciety  had  a  definitely  religious  setting.  The  members  the¬ 
oretically  modeled  themselves  on  a  being  or  group  of  beings 
from  whom  the  organization  derived  its  name,  and  partici¬ 
pation  depended  on  a  particular  type  of  vision, — indeed,  was 
compulsory  for  those  having  such  visions  lest  they  be  killed 
by  thunder.34 

I  am  of  opinion  that  the  phenomena  cited  proceed  from 
diverse  psychological  motives  and  that  successful  grappling 
with  the  question  at  issue  will  only  begin  when  we  cease  to 
lump  together  all  so-called  clownish  behavior  under  a  single 
head.  For  one  thing,  the  fire-dance  of  the  Arapaho  and 
the  kettle-trick  of  the  Dakota  and  Hidatsa  are  probably  not 
to  be  confounded  with  buffoonery  at  all.  True,  they  imply 
an  apparently  irrational  defiance  of  the  laws  of  nature.  In 
reality,  however,  the  point  of  these  performances  lies  in  the 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


3i8 

immunity  of  the  actors  from  the  effects  that  would  normally 
be  expected;  in  other  words,  they  are  demonstrating  their 
supernatural  powers,  a  thing  very  different  from  clownish¬ 
ness.  Secondly,  the  reckless  bravery  of  certain  men  in  the 
military  societies,  such  as  the  Hidatsa  Real  Dogs,  is  also  in 
the  nature  of  a  demonstration,  though  of  a  different  sort: 
the  actor  proves  that  he  possesses  in  an  exalted  degree  a  trait 
incumbent  on  all  tribesmen  in  milder  form.  Yet  in  this  case 
we  can  see  how  comic  elements  might  easily  develop  inci¬ 
dentally.  Suppose  that  the  name  “Crazy  Dog”  is  once  ap¬ 
plied  to  a  Crow  who  has  undertaken  the  vow  of  foolhardi¬ 
ness  ;  then  the  very  name  will  suggest  certain  modes  of  con¬ 
duct  and  correlated  modes  of  treatment.  “As  these  dogs 
act  when  they  see  a  cow,  so  he  acted  in  sight  of  the  buffalo. 
.  .  .  When  they  went  on  a  hunt,  the  people  regarded  him  as 
a  dog.”  The  mad  ignoring  of  danger  obligatory  in  sight 
of  the  foe  might  be  extended  to  like  conduct  in  camp :  as  a 
Crazy  Dog  walked  straight  towards  the  enemy  irrespective 
of  consequences,  so  he  would  ride  directly  into  the  midst  of 
a  group  of  tribesmen  unless  shooed  away  as  a  dog.  The 
suggestions  of  the  word  “crazy”  would  also  account  for 
backward  speech  and  all  manner  of  eccentricity.  In  this 
way,  some  of  the  farcical  proceedings  can  be  interpreted  not 
as  the  effect  of  religious  degeneration  but  as  casual  ramifi¬ 
cations  of  military  ideas;  and  they  appear  in  the  religious 
context  merely  because  these  military  ideas  are  linked  with 
religious  ones. 

As  for  the  buffoonery  of  the  Koyemshi,  we  may  fall  back 
upon  a  principle  previously  used  to  account  for  ceremonial 
amplification.  If  some  slapstick  sort  of  comedy  exists  in  a 
tribe  independently  of  sacred  connections  and  is  more  or  less 
regularly  evoked  by  a  specific  condition,  then  the  occur¬ 
rence  of  the  proper  cue  in  the  course  of  some  holy  ritual 


ASSOCIATION 


3i9 

may  set  in  motion  the  machinery  of  clownishness  without 
any  one’s  resenting  the  intrusion  as  anomalous. 

All  this  must  be  taken  as  purely  tentative  and  at  best  cov¬ 
ers  only  a  part  of  the  field.  It  is,  however,  useful  to  point 
out  the  existence  of  problems  and  also  that  they  are  at  least 
in  principle  not  altogether  insoluble. 

References 


1  Hoff  ding,  1893:  152. 

2  Kent  and  Rosanoff. 

3  Lowie,  1922 :  334,  391 ;  id.,  1915 :  41 ;  id.,  1919 :  185. 

4  Jung:  27  sq. 

5  R.  F.  Benedict :  79. 

6  Gutmann :  88  sq. ;  Spencer  and  Gillen,  1904 :  609.  Sapir, 
1922. 

7  Junod :  11,  376. 

8  Boas,  1914:  409. 

9  Woodworth :  376. 

10  Brown:  316.  Wissler,  1904:  236. 

11  Wissler,  1904 :  247. 

12  Merker :  196. 

13  Ehrenreich :  84.  Lowie,  1914:  608. 

14  Matthews,  1897:  90.  Dorsey  and  Kroeber:  51. 

15  Spencer  and  Gillen,  1904:  588  sq. 

16  Wissler,  1908:  74  sq.,  78  sq. 

17  Haeberlin :  9,  47. 

18  Spier. 

19  Skinner  and  Satterlee :  253-263. 

20  Boas,  1914:  403. 

21  Parsons,  1924. 

22  Lowie,  1913  (a)  :  109. 

23  Skinner,  1913  :  92. 

24  Lowie,  1913  (c)  :  232,  252. 

25  Spier:  515  f. 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


320 

26  Spier :  513. 

27  Lowie,  1919:  185;  id.,  1922:  334. 

28  Boas,  1914:  395. 

29  Wundt :  588  sq. 

30  Brown :  164. 

31  Lowie,  1913  (b)  :  207. 

32  Dixon,  1905:  271,  315.  Stevenson:  224,  235,  261,  276, 
429  sq. 

33  Kroeber,  1902-1907:  188-196. 

34  Lowie,  1922:  193;  id.,  1913  (c)  :  288;  id.,  1913  (a)  :  113; 
Wissler,  1912:  82. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


CONCLUSION 

In  the  Introduction  I  offered  a  tentative  definition  of  re¬ 
ligion;  and  in  concluding  it  seems  desirable  to  reexamine  it 
and  to  consider  its  implications.  Let  me  reaffirm,  first  of  all, 
my  skepticism  as  to  the  adequacy  of  any  definition  purport¬ 
ing  to  summarize  the  totality  of  phenomena  labeled  “Reli¬ 
gion.”  Why,  indeed,  should  any  one  spread  over  several 
hundred  pages  what  could  be  compressed  into  a  single  pithy 
sentence  ?  The  student  of  religion  is,  in  this  respect,  neither 
more  nor  less  favorably  situated  than,  say,  a  biologist  whose 
labors  cannot  be  summarized  by  definitions  of  Life.  My 
position  from  the  very  start  has  been  a  psychological  one : 
in  other  words,  I  have  tried  to  bring  under  a  common  head 
phenomena  that  from  a  psychological  point  of  view  belong 
together  as  set  over  against  the  rest  of  the  universe.  I  re¬ 
ject  the  parochialism  of  Fielding’s  parsons  because  Presby¬ 
terianism  and  Episcopalianism  are  psychologically  more  akin 
to  each  other  than  either  is  to  atheism ;  I  exclude  Leibnizian 
logic-chopping  because  the  mental  processes  it  involves  are 
distinct  from  those  predominant  in  undoubtedly  religious 
manifestations;  I  include  magic  and  religion  under  a  com¬ 
mon  head  in  so  far  as  both  display  the  same  or  similar  atti¬ 
tudes. 

My  definition,  then,  is  not  meant  to  be  an  adequate  but  a 
minimum  definition  of  the  psychological  correlates  of  re¬ 
ligion  ;  it  merely  attempts  to  disengage  the  least  common  de¬ 
nominator  in  all  religious  phenomena.  Like  Durkheim  I  de- 

321 


322 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


rive  this  common  element  from  a  dichotomy  of  the  universe; 
but,  following  Marett  rather  than  Durkheim,  I  see  this 
dichotomy  not  in  the  arbitrary  division  of  the  Sacred  from 
the  Profane  but  in  the  differential  response  to  normal  and 
abnormal  stimuli,  in  the  spontaneous  distinction  thus  created 
between  Natural  and  Supernatural,  which  does  not  require 
any  preexisting  abstract  formulation  of  “nature.”  The  re¬ 
sponse  is  that  of  amazement  and  awe ;  and  its  source  is  the 
Supernatural,  Extraordinary,  Weird,  Sacred,  Holy,  Divine. 
Possibly  in  contradistinction  from  Dr.  Soderblom,  I  am  in¬ 
clined  to  regard  the  last  three  adjectives  as  denoting  an  ex¬ 
ceedingly  common  special  form  of  the  Extraordinary  rather 
than  as  quite  co-extensive  with  the  Extraordinary  as  a  mini¬ 
mum  reality  corresponding  to  the  religious  sentiment.  I 
agree  with  him,  Drs.  Marett  and  Thurnwald,  not  to  men¬ 
tion  others,  in  regarding  the  recognition  of  a  personal  cor¬ 
relate  of  that  sentiment  as  unessential,  though  of  course  it 
also  is  very  frequent. 

It  may  of  course  be  objected  that  without  the  customary 
concept  of  divine  personality  there  cannot  be  any  psychologi¬ 
cal  equivalent  to  Religion.  But  let  the  skeptics  beware  of 
Parson  Adams’s  fallacy.  The  question  at  issue  is  at  bottom 
one  of  logical  classification  on  the  basis  of  empirical  find¬ 
ings.  It  is  by  no  means  indispensable  that  we  should  all 
classify  in  precisely  the  same  way,  but  it  is  highly  desirable 
that  we  should  understand  the  basis  of  one  another’s  classifi¬ 
cations.  Hence,  at  the  risk  of  repeating  what  has  already 
been  expressed  in  one  way  or  another,  I  will  state  the 
grounds  for  putting  into  the  category  of  religion  some 
phenomena  others  are  accustomed  to  exclude. 

If  I  correctly  comprehend  the  facts,  the  most  vital  part  of 
Crow  religion  is  independent  of  the  personality  of  the  super¬ 
natural  beings  but  consists  in  the  memory  of  an  ineffable  ex- 


CONCLUSION  323 

perience  of  an  extraordinary  character:  it  is  the  Extraor¬ 
dinary  nature  of  this  subjective  experience  that  hallows  its 
objective  correlates,  lifting  them,  too,  into  the  empyrean  of 
the  Extraordinary,  usually  with  the  affective  tinge  peculiar 
to  the  Sacred.  Among  the  Ekoi  I  do  not  find  that  the  im¬ 
personal  njomm  inspire  generically  different  emotions  from 
those  connected  with  njomm  definitely  conceived  as  personal. 
The  mystic  power  of  a  set  of  words  evokes  reactions  in  a 
Polynesian  community  that  cannot  be  surpassed  in  point  of 
solemn  awe,  if  they  are  ever  equaled,  by  the  dignity  of  their 
major  deities;  and  in  ancient  Egypt  the  occult  name  might, 
rank  as  greater  than  the  highest  gods  themselves.  Nay,  even 
when  we  are  dealing  with  the  personal  supernatural  beings 
there  may  be  evidence  that  it  is  not  the  element  of  personality 
that  is  significant  but  a  specific  impersonal  attribute.  How, 
for  example,  shall  we  interpret  Junod  s  statement  that  the 
maximum  devotion  among  the  Thonga  is  shown  by  those 
natives  who  have  been  freed  by  exorcism  from  Zulu  spirits 
possessing  them?  Why  are  the  normal  tribesman’s  prayers 
and  offerings  to  his  own  ancestors  mechanical  by  compari¬ 
son  with  the  fervor  of  the  neurotic  who  lacks  the  goad  of 
filial  piety?  It  is  because  the  latter  has  had  what  the  other 
cannot  directly  experience, — the  thrill  that  here,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  Crow,  apotheosizes  its  concomitants.  Gods  are 
prized  as  manifestations  of  the  Extraordinary  in  direct 
proportion  to  their  extraordinariness  from  a  subjective  point 

of  view.  . 

It  is  certainly  a  matter  worth  noting  that  two  distinguished 

thinkers  who  start  from  a  concept  of  religion  that  does  not 
coincide  with  mine  but  who  also  adhere  to  a  psychological 
position,  arrive  at  a  conclusion  generically  similar  to  mine, 
that  is,  feel  the  necessity  of  setting  aside  the  conventional 
boundaries  of  the  religious  field.  For  Hoff  ding,  religion  is 


324  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

the  feeling  determined  by  “the  fate  of  values  in  the  struggle 
for  existence, ,  and  he  concludes  his  inquiry  as  follows : 

If  this  be  so,  we  must  not  ignore  the  possibility  that  this 
underlying  element  of  religion  may  exist  and  operate  without 
expressing  itself  either  in  myth,  dogma,  or  cult.1 

Again,  James  defines  religion  as  a  total  reaction  upon  life 
when  involving  a  solemn,  serious  and  tender  attitude;  and 
the  divine,  according  to  him,  is  that  primal  reality  to  which 
the  individual  thus  responds.  He  not  only  is  willing  to  ac¬ 
knowledge  non-theistic  Buddhism  as  a  religion  but  goes  so 
far  as  to  say  that 

the  more  fervent  opponents  of  Christian  doctrine  have  often 
enough  shown  a  temper  which,  psychologically  considered,  is  in¬ 
distinguishable  from  religious  zeal.2 

In  other  words,  as  soon  as  a  psychological  position  is  as¬ 
sumed,  it  becomes  clear  that  the  most  divergent  objects,  nay, 
the  very  negation  of  what  is  ordinarily  felt  to  be  the  objec¬ 
tive  of  religious  devotion,  can  become  invested  with  religious 
\alue,  that  is,  can  evoke  responses  psychologically  indistin¬ 
guishable  from  those  evoked  by  universally  acknowledged 
religious  objects.  This  is  evidently  an  opinion  shared  by 
Durkheim  in  what  seems  to  me  much  the  soundest  part  of 
his  book.  Since  the  implications  of  this  view  are  not  yet 

fully  recognized,  a  few  examples  may  be  cited  for  purposes 
of  illustration. 

With  the  spread  of  free-thought  many  children  nowadays 
learn  an  evolutionary  account  in  place  of  the  Biblical  story 
of  creation.  The  truth  or  falsity  of  either  is  not  under  dis¬ 
cussion  here,  merely  the  psychological  attitude  engendered. 
That  is  identical  in  the  two  cases :  since  the  age  of  the  learner 


CONCLUSION 


325 


precludes  an  appreciation  of  the  pros  and  cons,  the  secular¬ 
ist’s  child  imbibes  evolution  in  the  same  spirit  of  docile  ac¬ 
ceptance  with  which  the  fundamentalist’s  child  accepts 
the  Scriptural  account.  Evolution  for  him  represents  a 
set  of  dogmas.  These  belong  to  the  Extraordinary  half 
of  the  universe  of  experience  because  they  are  acquired 
in  a  manner  distinct  from  that  of  conclusions  reached  by 
personal  inquiry  and  critical  reasoning.  Moreover  they  are 
emotionally  tinged  by  the  associations  of  early  childhood. 
When  these  dogmas  are  challenged  in  later  life,  there  is  ac¬ 
cordingly  the  same  shock  that  characterizes  an  affront  to 
orthodoxy  or  the  infraction  of  a  taboo.  Nay,  the  very  pres¬ 
entation  of  favorable  arguments  may  produce  a  feeling  of 
discomfort.  So  long  as  Evolution  remains  an  unanalyzed 
mysterious  complex  of  ideas  sanctified  from  boyhood,  it  is 
taboo,  set  apart  from  the  operations  of  logical  thinking.  At¬ 
tempt  to  prove  it,  and  the  very  need  for  proof  is  bound  to 
shake  confidence :  the  beliefs  are  transplanted  to  the  sphere 
of  the  workaday  world,  hence  they  become  noa.  Besides 
there  always  lurks  the  disagreeable  suspicion  that  what  can 
be  proved  by  ordinary  reasoning  might  also  be  disproved  by 
the  same  processes  in  the  light  of  wider  knowledge. 

All  the  mental  processes  outlined  above  in  the  study  of 
primitive  religion  are  traceable  in  avowedly  rationalistic 
literature.  The  case  of  Ernst  Haeckel,  for  many  years  the 
leader  of  German  Darwinism,  is  instructive.  An  unbiased 
reader  of  his  popular  book  on  The  Riddles  of  the  Universe 
readily  perceives  that  he  is  not  dealing  with  a  colorless  pres¬ 
entation  of  scientific  theory.  The  author  has  had  a  mystic 
thrill  from  the  philosophical  extension  of  an  evolutionary 
point  of  view.  Unification  of  isolated  biological  data,  such 
as  every  scientific  research  has  for  its  aim,  has  led  to  the 
emotionally  gratifying  postulate  of  unity  in  the  whole  of 

r  — ' 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


326 

the  universe,  of  “monism.”  But  this  term  does  not  bear  the 
meaning  attached  to  it  in  philosophical  nomenclature;  it  is 
surcharged  with  affective  significance.  It  becomes  a  symbol 
of  the  soul-satisfying  vision  and  a  means  for  gathering  under 
a  common  head  what  is  independently  felt  to  be  valuable, — 
very  much  as  the  Crow  Indian  secondarily  associates  his  life 
values  with  a  visionary  experience.  Haeckel's  letters  to  his 
parents  during  the  years  of  adolescence  3  prove  that  no  such 
mutation  as  superficial  observers  have  indicated  ever  took 
place  in  Haeckel’s  mental  development.  His  attitude,  from 
first  to  last,  was  psychologically  identical, — the  attitude  of 
an  esthetical,  sentimental  man  yearning  for  some  sort  of 
awe-inspiring  mystery  in  the  universe.  When  the  Protestant 
God  of  early  manhood  was  superseded  by  the  Principle  of 
Causality  or  the  Law  of  Substance  of  later  years,  there  was 
a  mere  substitution  of  scientific  for  theological  phraseology, 
for  the  scientific  terms  did  not  correspond  to  the  concepts  of 
exact  science.  To  align  the  ardent  Haeckel  with  his  dispas¬ 
sionate  preceptor  Virchow,  both  when  they  met  as  student 
and  professor  and  in  their  later  tilts  in  evolutionary  debate, 
is  to  observe  the  profound  effect  of  individual  variability  in 
men  exposed  to  similar  external  influences.  Further,  the 
phenomenal  vogue  of  Haeckel’s  teachings  illustrates  the  in¬ 
fluence  a  powerful  personality  appearing  at  an  opportune 
juncture  can  exert  on  thousands  of  followers. 

The  investigation  of  Socialism,  not  as  a  system  of  eco¬ 
nomic  thought  or  of  social  reform,  but  exclusively  as  a 
phenomenon  of  social  psychology,  likewise  presents  many 
points  of  interest  of  which  only  one  need  be  mentioned 
here. 

In  1877  there  appeared  a  rather  technical  book  devoted  to 
the  evolution  of  forms  of  marriage  and  other  sociological 
phenomena, — Lewis  H.  Morgan’s  Ancient  Society.  The 


CONCLUSION 


327 


author  certainly  would  not  have  subscribed  to  many  doc¬ 
trines  of  classical  Socialism,  but  the  then  leaders  of  the  Ger¬ 
man  movement  were  attracted  by  some  aspects  of  the  work, 
had  it  translated  into  German,  and  made  it  an  integral  part 
of  Socialistic  doctrine.  In  this  way,  specific  doctrines  which 
in  themselves  had  no  connection  with  the  objects  of  Social¬ 
istic  propaganda  became,  by  secondary  association,  sacrosanct 
in  the  eyes  of  Socialistic  orthodoxy,  for  the  whole  book  had 
•  become  a  symbol  of  the  emotional  complex  that  primarily 
constituted  Socialistic  psychology.  For  example,  Morgan 
had  insisted  that  the  monogamous  family  must  have  de¬ 
veloped  slowly  out  of  preceding  stages,  the  earliest  being  one 
of  complete  promiscuity,  which  was  followed  by  group  mar¬ 
riage.  If  some  innocent  ethnologist  pointed  out  that  the 
rudest  peoples  were  often  monogamous,  he  was  fortunate 
if  Socialistic  critics  did  not  charge  him  with  deliberate  falsifi¬ 
cation  of  facts,  but  merely  with  an  inveterate  Philistine 
prejudice  that  made  him  project  bourgeois  morality  into 
primitive  social  life.  I  myself  once  discussed  the  kinship 
systems  of  certain  Indian  tribes  with  an  intelligent  Russian 
lady  and  tried  to  explain  that  my  observations  did  not  bear 
out  Morgan’s  contentions.  The  answer  was  that  they  must 
have  changed  since  Morgan’s  day  as  a  result  of  modern  con¬ 
ditions.  To  understand  the  absurdity  of  this  rationaliza¬ 
tion  ad  hoc ,  we  must  recollect  that  it  is  of  the  very  essence  of 
Morgan’s  system  that  kinship  terms  are  preserved  with  the 
utmost  tenacity,  survive  the  wreckage  of  social  systems,  and 
can  thus  be  used  to  reconstruct  social  usages  dating  back  not 
centuries  but  millennia.  Orthodoxy  does  not  change  in 
character  with  a  change  from  ecclesiastical  to  secular 
dogmas :  its  invariable  correlate  is  “a  temper  which,  psycho¬ 
logically  considered,  is  indistinguishable  from  religious  zeal.” 

The  examples  considered  above  happen  to  belong  to  the 


328  PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 

field  of  “radical”  movements,  but  secular  movements  with  a 
deliberately  or,  at  least,  predominantly  conservative  bias  dis¬ 
play  precisely  the  same  psychology.  Thus,  admirers  of  a 
powerful  State  glorify  their  ideals  with  all  the  fanaticism 
of  religious  enthusiasts  and  evolve  a  mythology  of  their 
own,  with  its  symbols  and  rationalizations ;  and  eugenics  was 
heralded  by  its  founder  himself  as  a  substitute  for  traditional 
religion.  We  are,  however,  not  concerned  with  appraising 
these  several  religions ;  we  are  interested  merely  in  register¬ 
ing  the  fact  that  there  persists,  apart  from  universally  recog¬ 
nized  forms  of  religion,  a  sentiment  analogous  to  that  asso¬ 
ciated  with  them.  This  sentiment,  then,  is  independent  of 
a  definable  object  but  capable  of  concentrating  on  any  object 
and  by  such  concentration  creating  its  Supernatural,  while 
by  secondary  association  all  manner  of  other  objects  may  be 
gathered  within  the  scope  of  the  Supernatural. 

This  conclusion  gives  a  sufficiently  clear  answer  to  the 
query  so  often  raised  in  recent  decades,  whether  religion  is 
likely  to  outlast  the  apparently  triumphant  spread  of  scien¬ 
tific  enlightenment.  If  religion  is  understood  in  our  sense, 
then  assuredly  it  will  survive,  for  history  shows  merely  a 
transfer  of  the  religious  sentiment  to  new  manifestations 
of  the  Extraordinary  or  Holy,  never  an  extinction  of  the 
sentiment  itself.  Science  itself — not  as  the  ideal  of  the  great¬ 
est  scientists  but  as  the  actual  phenomenon  of  culture-history 
— exhibits  the  unremitting  sloughing  off  of  folk-beliefs  and 
their  unremitting  regeneration  when  the  thoughts  of  the  bold 
innovator  turn  into  the  sanctified  formulae  of  his  disciples,— 
when  they  accept  as  Extraordinary  or  taboo  what  he  estab¬ 
lished  by  defying  the  traditional  taboos  of  his  time. 

But  even  if  religion  is  conceived  in  the  customary  fashion, 
there  is  no  obvious  warrant  in  history  for  presaging  its  ex¬ 
tinction.  Personal  deities  have  certainly  made  a  powerful 


CONCLUSION 


329 

appeal  in  a  variety  of  distinct  societies,  and  there  is  no  rea¬ 
son  for  assuming  that  within  any  measurable  span  of  time 
such  concepts  will  fail  to  satisfy  the  religious  longings  of  a 
large  portion  of  mankind.  What  is  more,  it  is  likely  that  in 
our  own  civilization  some  of  the  very  forces  that  have  been 
most  active  in  combating  organized  religion  in  the  immediate 
past  will  rally  to  its  defense.  The  excesses  of  nationalistic 
State  worshipers,  coupled  with  the  charlatanism  of  race-the¬ 
orists  who  ignorantly  pretend  to  knowledge  no  living  man 
possesses  or  even  deliberately  falsify  biological  data,  may 
well  raise  a  doubt  among  humanitarian  liberals  of  the  type  of 
John  Morley,  whether  the  perverse  adoration  of  brute  force 
is  a  preferable  substitute  for  a  faith  and  a  Church  never 
wholly  devoid  of  spiritual  elements. 

From  a  purely  intellectual  point  of  view,  too,  the  attitude 
towards  established  religion  on  the  part  of  professed  ration¬ 
alists  is  likely  to  acquire  a  serenity  hardly  to  be  anticipated 
a  generation  ago.  On  the  one  hand,  the  traditional  time- 
honored  allegations  against  organized  religion  are  apprecia¬ 
bly  reduced  in  the  light  of  sane  historical  inquiry :  from 
Mach  we  learn  that  it  was,  above  all,  the  inveterate  spon¬ 
taneous  human  adherence  to  tradition  rather  than  the  ex¬ 
ternal  pressure  of  a  hostile  Church  that  arrested  progress  in 
the  physical  sciences.  But  historical-mindedness  cannot  stop 
at  this  point.  If  it  is  the  anthropologist’s  first  duty  to  study 
his  Crow  or  Ekoi  with  the  maximum  possible  of  sympa¬ 
thetic  insight;  if  practices  from  our  point  of  view  judged 
absurd  or  repulsive  are  examined  without  an  attempt  at  ad¬ 
verse  comment;  would  it  not  be  strange  if  he  assumed  to¬ 
wards  the  majority  sharing  his  own  culture  an  attitude  of 
lofty  or  at  best  good-natured  disdain?  The  thinker  who  de¬ 
clines  to  pass  judgment  on  the  Ekoi  belief  in  sorcery  or  on 
Congolese  fetichism  cannot  consistently  denounce  as  idola- 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGION 


330 

trous”  the  observances  of  fellow-citizens  whose  conceptions 
of  the  Divine  happen  not  to  coincide  with  his  own. 

An  unbiased  view  of  human  history  also  leads  to  a  re¬ 
vision  of  the  received  rationalist  program  of  future  progress. 
We  cannot  lay  down  as  a  uniformly  desirable  goal  that 
purely  intellectual  enlightenment  which  so  powerfully  stirred 
the  spirits  of  many  worthy  thinkers  of  the  last  century.  As 
Cornelius  has  well  said,  not  the  acquisition  of  intellectual 
insight  but  the  unfolding  of  human  individuality  into  an 
harmonious  work  of  art  constitutes  the  supreme  and  uni¬ 
versal  human  task.  Let  those  whose  Divine  lies  in  the  pur¬ 
suit  of  demonstrable  truth  pursue  their  way  unhindered  by 
external  obstacles,  but  let  them  not  foist  on  others  an  atti¬ 
tude  peculiar  to  themselves.  Thus  this  book  closes  with  a 
note  often  struck  in  the  preceding  pages, — with  a  recognition 
of  the  importance  of  individual  differences. 


1  Hoffding,  1906 :  109. 

2  James:  35. 

3  Haeckel. 


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Amer.  Anth.,  Mem. — Memoirs  of  the  American  Anthropologi¬ 
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B.A.E.,  Bull. — Bulletin  of  the  Bureau  of  (American)  Eth¬ 
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33i 


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INDEX 


Ancestor- worship,  lacking  in  North 
America,  175 ;  present  in  Africa, 
China,  Siberia,  174. 

Andamanese,  souls,  100;  high-god 
concept,  129-131 ;  magical  prac¬ 
tices,  144;  sibless,  157;  regula¬ 
tions  for  menstruant,  216; 
dreams,  225 ;  dreams  significant 
for  shamanism,  241 ;  shaman,  313. 

Animatism,  Marett’s  definition, 
134;  non-religious,  134. 

Animism,  definition,  99;  discussion 
of  Tylor’s  theory,  106-115. 

Arapaho,  older  ceremonies  re¬ 
placed  by  Ghost  Dance,  197 ; 
Peyote  Cult,  200;  Ghost  Dance 
leaders,  255 ;  Sun  Dance,  295 ; 
Ceremonies,  305-306 ;  Crazy 
Dance,  316. 

Art,  designs  revealed  in  visions, 
Siouan,  260-261 ;  Omaha,  262 ; 
secular  and  religious  style, 
Plains,  263,  Koryak,  263-264, 
Ojibwa,  264-265. 

Association,  of  ideas,  Crow  cp. 
American,  278-280 ;  Havasupai, 
280. 

Australians,  not  rudest  savages, 
144;  magic,  145-146;  totemism, 
I53"154i  privileges  of  old 
women,  217 ;  attitude  toward 
multiple  births,  283. 

Bagobo,  concept  of  soul,  103- 104. 

Bear  Cult,  in  Siberia  and  America, 
181-182. 

Benedict,  R.  F.,  on  guardian  spirits, 
123,  170;  criticism  of  Durkheim, 
on  basis  of  American  data,  158; 
on  vision  in  North  America,  171 ; 
on  ghosts,  175. 


Berdache,  in  Siberia  and  America, 
181 ;  Crow,  243-244;  Chukchi, 
244;  Borneo,  245. 

Boas,  on  religious  art,  265;  secon¬ 
dary  association,  299;  on  mytho¬ 
logical  trickster,  312. 

Brown,  on  Andamanese,  129-131 ; 
on  Andamanese  shaman,  313. 

Bull-roarers,  in  ceremonials, 
Bukaua,  67;  named  for  dead, 
69,  70;  diffusion  of,  70;  Navaho, 
Hopi,  294. 

Bushmen,  religion,  131-132;  magic, 
145;  sibless,  158;  treatment  of 
adolescent  girl,  216. 

Ceremonialism,  Ekoi  cp.  Crow,  49; 
men’s  organization  in,  Ekoi,  50; 
Crow  Sun  Dance,  275-276; 
growth  of,  299-319;  buffoonery 
in  Zuni,  315-316. 

Charms,  used  at  pig  market, 
Bukaua,  58,  59 ;  love,  Bukaua, 
61. 

Chinook,  theory  of  disease,  177; 
restrictions  of  adolescent  girl, 
214. 

Cosmogony,  Crow,  28-30 ;  Man- 
gaian,  84. 

Crow,  religion,  3-32,  322-323,  cp. 
Ekoi,  52-53,  Bukaua,  73,  Polyne¬ 
sian,  91,  96;  attitude  toward 
spirits  cp.  Winnebago,  136;  sub¬ 
jectivism,  15 1 ;  attitude  toward 
sun,  169-170;  Sun  Dance,  198, 
275-276;  no  sex  difference,  206- 
207 ;  access  to  spirits,  222 ;  sen¬ 
sory  types,  230;  personality  of 
leader,  248-251 ;  sacred  numbers, 
284 ;  symbolism,  287 ;  clowns, 
314;  Crazy  Dogs,  317. 


343 


344 


INDEX 


Dakota,  ghost  dance,  188-190,  191, 
J9 2,  193,  I94»  195;  concept  of 
soul,  104;  concept  of  disease, 
176;  Badger  dance  society,  300. 

Disease,  theories  of,  176-180. 

Divination,  Ekoi,  34~35 ;  Polyne¬ 
sian,  92,  93;  Thonga,  141-143; 
not  universal,  146;  in  Siberia, 
173. 

Dreams,  equivalent  to  visions. 
Crow,  8;  appearance  of  deceased 
in,  Polynesian,  86-87 ;  conven¬ 
tionalization  of,  Crow,  225-229; 
source  of  decorative  composition, 
289. 

Durkheim,  objections  to  Tylor’s 
theory  of  animism,  108 ;  criticism 
of  Tylor,  109,  113;  on  dreams, 
hi;  division  of  universe  into 
Sacred  and  Profane,  148-149, 150, 
I53-IS7;  minimum  definition  of 
religion,  153;  criticism  of,  160- 
163. 

Ekoi,  religion, .  33-53,  323 ;  cp. 
Crow,  Tami,  Bukaua,  73; 
women’s  disability,  207-208. 

Ethics,  relation  to  religion,  Crow, 
29. 

Euahlayi,  high-god,  145-146. 

Fetishism,  Congo,  268-270. 

Folklore,  effect  on  religion,  271- 
274;  myths  and  ritual,  291-299. 

Frazer,  on  magic,  137-147. 

Galton,  on  psychological  variability, 
225;  on  numerical  associations, 
284-285. 

Ghost  dance,  description  of  Teton 
Dakota,  188-190;  historical  cir¬ 
cumstances  of,  190-194;  ethno¬ 
logical  and  historical  interpreta¬ 
tion,  195-200. 

Ghosts,  Ekoi  attitude  toward, 
40-42;  not  tutelaries  in  North 
America,  175. 


Goldenweiser,  on  religion  and 
magic,  147-148;  criticism  of 
Durkheim,  157-159,  160,  161, 

162. 

Haeckel,  on  evolution,  325-326. 

Harrison,  on  sources  of  Greek 
drama,  259. 

Havasupai,  association  of  ideas, 
280;  head-scratching,  282. 

Hidatsa,  purchase  of  hereditary 
bundles,  17;  four  souls,  104; 
symbolism,  287;  Bird  ceremony, 
296-297;  Goose  Association,  302; 
military  societies,  305,  307-308. 

Hoffding,  on  association  of  ideas, 
277;  definition  of  religion,  323- 

324. 

Jabim,  life  after  death,  59;  feuds 
suspended,  68. 

Jagga,  concept  of  soul,  100;  atti¬ 
tude  toward  multiple  births,  282. 

James,  definition  of  religion,  324. 

Kai,  feuds  suspended,  68. 

Lang,  criticism  of  Tylor,  1 19-122; 
on  folklore  and  religion,  271, 

273. 

Life  after  death,  Bukaua,  59; 
Jabim,  59;  Tami,  64. 

Magic,  imitative,  Bukaua,  54,  55; 
formulae,  55 ;  contagious,  Bukaua, 
57,  58;  summary  of,  Bukaua,  58, 
59 ;  importance  in  Maori  life,  94 ; 
definition,  136 ;  relation  to  science, 
137,  to  religion,  138,  146,  151. 

Man,  E.  H.,  on  Andamanese,  129- 

131. 

Mana,  Oceanian  concept  of,  75,  76; 
likeness  to  maxpe  of  Crow, 
njomm  of  Ekoi,  76. 

Marett,  on  religion,  XVI,  definition 
of  animatism,  134;  criticism  of 
Frazer  on  magic,  140;  on  re¬ 
ligion  and  magic,  147-148;  criti¬ 
cism  of  Durkheim,  149. 


INDEX 


Menomini,  souls,  103;  magic,  175; 
bundles,  302. 

Messiahs,  ghost  dance,  191-200; 
African,  251-253 ;  personality  of, 
253-254- 

Ordeal,  for  witches,  Ekoi,  35. 

Paviotso,  home  of  Wovoka,  191 ; 
ghost  cult  of,  193;  ghost  dance 
cp.  Dakota,  195-196. 

Pawnee,  star  cult,  16 1. 

Perry,  criticism  of  Tylor  based  on 
G.  Elliot  Smith’s  theory,  114. 

Peyote  cult,  Christian  elements, 
200;  introduced  among  Winne¬ 
bago  by  Rave,  201-204;  innova¬ 
tions  by  Hensley,  202-204. 

Priests,  none  among  Crow,  14-15 i 
trances  of,  Polynesia,  88-90. 

Puberty,  rites  of  Bukaua,  66;  dif¬ 
fusion  of  rites,  71;  period  of 
conversion,  218-219. 

Radin,  on  interpretation  of  North 
American  religion,  120,  123;  on 
Winnebago  puberty  fast,  232- 
234- 

Rank,  significance  of,  Polynesia, 
76-78. 

Sacred  numbers,  Crow,  284;  Pavi¬ 
otso,  284. 

Sacrifice,  bloody,  in  America,  173. 

Schmidt,  high-god  concept,  127- 
131 ;  on  development  of  religion, 
167-169 ;  on  folklore  and  religion, 
271. 

Semang,  high-god,  124;  magic, 
145-' 

Sensory  types,  224-230. 

Sex  and  religion,  245-246. 

Shamans,  relation  to  client,  Crow, 
16;  rivalry  between,  Crow,  1 71 
importance  of,  in  Siberia,  173 ; 
hysterical  temperament,  Chukchi, 
242. 


345 

Shoshoni,  life  principle,  101-102; 
sun  myth,  272. 

Siberia,  cp.  America,  173. 

Soderblom,  definition  of  religion, 
xvii,  322. 

Sorcerers,  bodily  transformation 

^  of,  Ekoi,  33. 

Souls,  Ekoi  conception  of,  40-41 ; 
Bukaua,  59;  Tami,  65;  Jagga, 
100;  Andamanese,  100;  Sho- 
shoni,  101 ;  Bagobo,  103-104; 
number  of,  related  to  sacred 
number,  105 ;  concept  of  dis¬ 
cussed,  99-106;  kidnaping  of, 

177-178. 

Spencer  and  Gillen,  on  Central 
Australians,  145,  146. 

Spier,  association  of  ideas,  Hava- 
supai,  280 ;  head-scratching, 
Havasupai,  282;  on  Sun  Dance, 

295,  304,  309-310. 

Sun,  object  of  supplication,  Crow, 
20-22;  Dance  of  Crow,  27,  275- 
276;  myth,  Shoshonean,  272,  Ute, 
272;  Dance,  Cheyenne,  Arapaho, 
295- 

Supernatural  beings,  Crow,  18-23; 
Ekoi,  46-48;  Bukaua,  60;  Tonga, 
82,  83;  Hawaii,  83;  systematized 
by  priesthood,  81. 

Swanton,  on  sib  organization  in  re¬ 
lation  to  totemism,  158. 

Sweatlodge,  in  Crow  ritual,  23-24. 

Symbolism,  285-287. 

Taboo,  Polynesian  concept  of,  78- 
81 ;  negative  magic,  137-138;  dic¬ 
tated  by  vision,  Crow,  291. 

Takelma,  black  magic,  175 ;  con¬ 
ception  of  disease,  176. 

Tami,  spirits,  61,  62;  life  after 
death,  64;  souls,  65;  feuds  sus¬ 
pended,  68 ;  bull-roarers,  70 ; 
rituals,  71,  72;  religion  cp.  Ekoi, 

73* 

Thonga,  divination,  141-143;  no 
sun  worship,  161 ;  women  magi¬ 
cians,  208. 


INDEX 


346 

Thunderbird,  in  North  American 
art  and  religion,  268. 

Tobacco,  society,  ritual  of,  24-27; 
raised  for  religious  purposes 
only,  24;  society,  history  of,  294. 

Tonga,  concept  of  souls,  77 ;  super¬ 
natural  beings,  82 ;  iconoclastic 
king,  236-237,  238-239. 

Tylor,  definition  of  religion,  xiv; 
criticism  of,  xv ;  on  animism, 
99 ;  on  soul,  102 ;  criticism  of 
theory  of  animism,  106-110;  in¬ 
fluenced  by  Evolutionary  theory, 
116-117;  separates  religion  and 
magic,  137;  on  theory  of  disease, 
180. 

Vision,  Crow,  quest  of,  4-8;  faith 
in,  8-10;  physical  cause  of,  11; 
imagery  in,  12;  tribal  influence 
on,  13;  functions  defined  by,  15; 
distribution  in  North  America, 
171 ;  importance  of,  288. 


Winnebago,  tobacco  offering  as 
magic,  139-140;  attitude  toward 
spirits  cp.  Crow,  136;  Peyote 
cult,  201-204;  fasting  regulated 
by  elders,  223-224;  fasting  ex¬ 
perience,  232-234. 

Witchcraft,  psychology  of,  Ekoi, 
36-40. 

Women,  debarred  from  religious 
activity,  Australia,  New  Guinea, 
205 ;  shamans,  Northern  Cali¬ 
fornia,  206;  lesser  shamans, 
Chukchi,  208 ;  restrictions  of, 
Anvik,  210;  treatment  of,  during 
menstruation,  211-217. 

Wovoka,  prophet  of  Ghost  Dance, 
191 ;  orders  to  Dakota,  255 ;  im¬ 
pression  on  visitors,  254-255. 

Yahgan,  cp.  North  American  In¬ 
dians,  172. 


THE  END 


